Demon Blood

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The lone penguin continued forth into the wilderness as it stepped boldly out into the wastelands without regret. A full, boiling sun beat down hard on him from high above, but the flightless bird knew that it had to continue on if it wanted to escape the merciless desert before the day was through. The massive shadows of some sort of foreign beast high above spread out across the ground, and the bird absently wondered if scavengers had followed him out this far in anticipation of a full meal once he fell. But when the waddling penguin glanced up towards the heavens to confirm its presumptions, it looked on in horror to watch as several white monsters blotted out the sun with their spread wings of death. Each one looked like an enormously oversized humanoid, similar to the robotic creatures that it had seen before. Yet, the creators of these ones had not even tried to construct their faces in the semblance of a man, for instead of the normal features of a human being, all that protruded from their bulky skulls were enormous jaws filled with jagged molars with which to crush their prey. The penguin could do nothing but shiver in their presence, watching as they circled high overhead, waiting to swoop down on some invisible prey, but none of them ever came. Eventually, it realized that the forms that he saw up there could not see him, for they were somehow separated on another plane of existence, their senses unable to detect his small, fleshy body down below. However, as he hurriedly continued his journey across the broken earth, he feared the wrath of those devils, wondering what he would do if he truly had to face their deadly maws, for though he could only observe their majestic figures from his small place on earth, he could already tell that monsters such as they had been created only to wreck havoc on the world, their sadistic smiles of malevolent glee waiting only to unleash the indomitable hatred of their human creators upon their foes.

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"Dying a Child Child Prey Hurry & May the reasons why one can't laugh from the heart it's a simple reason that's life Kiss Me Deadly Kiss Me kill Me Love Me Kiss Me kill Me Love Me Child is Burning Kiss Me kill Me Love Me Kiss Me Deadly."

--- Dir en Grey, "Child Prey"

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A violent scream tore through the farthest reaches of Toy's castle as a large, caped figure writhed on the ground of the emperor's massive chambers, his tortured voice reached all the way up into the deepest corners of the room's vaulted ceiling and shaking it with the agony that ripped through his mind. Hidden by the warm shadows of his throne, Toy dispassionately watched Yujin suffer as he pulled at strings across the general's mind. He had anticipated a bit of discontent on the part of his servant from the previous mission since he had not allowed the general to lead it himself, but he certainly had not foreseen something of this magnitude. It was quite obvious that Yujin's current state of mind would have led him to destroy Neon before they even found Edge had he had the chance, and that in itself could prove to be a serious problem in the future. He was certainly growing more powerful, the developments in his mind maturing his abilities at an exponential rate. However, his stability was deteriorating just as quickly, and if he wasn't soon shown just how unacceptable this sort of behavior was, it was very possible that he may become too large of a risk to keep around anymore at all.

"You're proving to be quite a liability as of late," said Toy as he lounged in his chair. "I had hoped that you would have learned a little bit since our last encounter with this problem, but it appears that you're insistent on continuing some very troublesome bad habits."

Yujin whined and growled erratically as he writhed on the ground like a wounded animal, and as his incoherent sounds finally began to slow down into steady but violently quick gulps of air, his cracked voice attempted to offer an answer to his master's accusations.

"Toy-sama," he gasped as his legs uncontrollably kicked out against the floor. "I was only trying to finish the mission. Neon had been rendered immobile by the renegade unit. Would it not have been my position to take up where he left off?"

"I gave specific orders, Yujin, and considering that your violent tendencies led you to blow up the viral program uploaded in Neon's system, I am not particularly inclined to believe that what you're saying right now is particularly sincere."

"But... why is it necessary to kill him like this?" puffed the general. "Why must we deal with all these elaborate measures when it would be so much easier to do it the old fashioned way?"

Yujin involuntarily flinched at the end of his words as the enforcer stepped out from beneath the eves with its enormous staff in hand, the floor groaning in pain as it lumbered across the room with a presence that overwhelmed even the meekest of the general's pleas.

"Yujin," said Toy as he leaned his elbow against the arm of his throne and rested his chin in the palm of his hand. "It is not your place to question my commands. I thought by now that you would have learned to simply trust my intuitions and undertake my orders not as a personal suggestion, but as a mandate."

"Yes sir," said Yujin quietly as his iris-less eyes looked up in trembling uncertainty at the nine-foot monstrosity that had stopped inches from his fingertips. "I understand perfectly well, but---"

"---and that's the problem we have here. Too many 'buts.' I can hear the words coming out of your mouth perfectly well, but if you continue to contest the things that I am trying to show you with such tenacity, then perhaps you truly haven't learned the lessons that I am trying to teach you. However, if you truly must learn by example, then so be it."

A soft breeze flittered by Yujin's cheek as he continued to stare up into the cold, dark eyes on the behemoth, and he was temporarily distracted by its kind caress as he tried to wonder what his master intended for him with the enforcer's advance. He didn't realize the change until he heard the thundering crash behind him and felt his upper torso slowly begin to tip over to his right from a loss of balance, but then he saw that the enormous android's single right arm was already easing its mighty staff back into place, the brief moment of violent action having already been accomplished. And as his body hit the ground and his mind desperately struggled to right itself with flailing limbs, his wide, silent eyes glanced about to the sound of the crash, spotting the severed arm which he had been so helplessly trying to use as a support.

"You see, Yujin, we can destroy Edge in this manner if we truly wanted to. Physical destruction is quite easy to implement, as I have just demonstrated on yourself. Unfortunately, the situation that we are currently dealing with requires us to go above and beyond such simple methods of elimination, and the reason why is this: the mind and the very essence of this individual is our target, not his body. As an android, surely you must understand the extent of your own durability, as well as that of the ones you call your enemy. Therefore, you must also understand how relatively easy it is to repair that frame or simply transfer your consciousness to a new one should your current shell become broken. This is the primary flaw of attempting to destroy Edge in a physical fashion, and I'm sure that you can still assess yourself to be in prime combat condition despite that limb which I have just severed."

Yujin nodded dumbly as he stared up at the enforcer's unforgiving look, and Toy grit his jaw a bit in disdain as he continued on with his speech.

"This is the reason why we must aim beyond this weakness. The renegade unit must not be allowed to continue with its journey, and in order to do that---" and Toy gently pointed his index finger in his subordinate's direction. "--- we must destroy it completely."

Upon a single mental command, millions of microscopic sensors flared to life within the general's body, linking together countless nerve endings in an overwhelming burst of electrical energy that cascaded into his head like a waterfall. At first, Yujin could not tell exactly what was happening, his computers jumping off the walls as his surroundings suddenly began to drown him with their sensory images. However, he never had time to reorient himself in his new state of mind, for before he realized what was going on, he suddenly found his remaining hand gripping madly at his sparking stump and the sea of pain that gushed forth from the wound. His head swam in an ocean of light as he desperately tried to maintain his hold on reality, but the white noise filling his ears was simply too loud for him to concentrate, too loud for him to do anything. And it was then that he realized that the white noise was his own voice screaming like a dying animal, and Yujin's body and mind quickly succumbed to the experience that was the human nerve system.

Toy sighed as he cut the connection, but the mental backlash had already taken such a firm hold on the general's mind that the hard surface beneath his spasming body was already beginning to crumble from the energies that were unintentionally leaking out of his system. Yujin was strong, that had never been in question. He certainly had all the qualifications that were needed for the job at hand. His only problem was that he seemed to have the most difficult time understanding anything that was directly spoken to his face. A physical stimulus was almost always necessary to truly push the message home.

"Yuusuke," he said, watching as the raven-haired android slowly phased into the room on one knee. "Please escort Yujin out of my chambers and make sure that he gets that arm reattached to his body."

"Yes, Toy-sama," replied the soldier, and began setting about the difficult business of transporting the larger and half-crazed general to the proper facilities.

The enforcer returned to Toy's side at the throne as the emperor watched his henchman lift the squirming mass over his shoulder and faze out of the room. The screams did not stop after they had left though, for the general's cries of mental anguish easily cut through to even the darkest corners of the castle keep. If it were his own choice, the emperor would not treat his subjects in this manner. However, it was already too late in the game for Yujin to be acting this way, and before long the rebel unit's party would inflict irreversible harm upon his plans if they were not stopped. But the Edge unit... something about it frightened Toy. It was unraveling all of his plans, reading all of his moves, and continuing forward as if nothing could stand in its path. Its actions were unpredictable, and its will was so strong that its aspirations were nothing short of obvious. It was evolving in ways that no living creature should be able to do. It had even conquered the temptations of the sueno chip, something that no normal mind had ever been able to accomplish. How had he been able to achieve such a feat? What was it about him that had allowed him to conquer the very demon of human desire? Somewhere deep within that metal body, something unknown and frighteningly awesome lay, and though Toy knew that he had to destroy it in order to preserve his world, he was already beginning to wonder if such a thing was even possible.

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Darkness slowly gave way to trails of light as Double's vision gradually came back to him. Numbers and charts registered in his head as his computer attempted to assess the damage done to his body from their last battle, but it wasn't long before he found his consciousness began to waver beneath the newfound stress that racked his head. He was still alive, but only barely. Even he hadn't expected to survive that last blow, and yet he still somehow managed to come out of their last battle in one piece. It was probably a miracle that he was even feeling as bad as he did now, and the killer did his best to continue cycling that thought through his head as he grunted in discomfort and attempted to get a better hold of his faltering programs.

"Feeling better?"

The assassin grimaced as he turned his head in the direction of Kouryuu's voice, his eyelids creaking open and squinting against the sun's harsh light as his visual sensors stabilized themselves in their new environment. From the angle of the sparse clouds overhead, he seemed to be lying on his back in the cold forests of Moroku Dana, the shadows of leafy branches dancing coolly across his face high above. And from the relatively calm look on the rebel's face, it seemed as if their last conflict had managed to favorably resolve itself in his absence of consciousness, though he could not read the complete outcome from her expression alone.

"Yeah, thanks," he said, squinting as he continued to adjust his body's environmental responses. "How'd we do?"

Kouryuu just gave a small laugh and brought her hand up to pat Double on the head like a child.

"I don't think we'd be talking right now if we had lost. You ended up sustaining the heaviest injuries out of everybody, but otherwise we were able to make it out of that mess with our heads still attached to our shoulders."

"That's good," replied Double absently, craning his neck up a bit now that his system began to get used to the local setting. "Things weren't looking very bright when I went out. What kind of miracle were you guys able to pull off to get away from those guys?"

The rebel's light expression abruptly faded away at Double's question, and almost as if the killer's words had beckoned forth unpleasant memories, he watched as the light quickly fled from her bright eyes.

"Edge woke up," she said simply. "He was the one who finished dispatching the last of Toy's forces."

Double's expression quickly moved to match his companion's as confusion began to cloud his vision. Edge had recovered? Not only that, but with more than enough power to finish off the entirety of their opponents? That couldn't possibly be the whole story. There must be some sort of further explanation to clarify why they were still alive.

"That doesn't make sense," he said. "Not that I'm not thankful, but that wasn't exactly how I expected to be saved."

"I know, neither did I." Kouryuu glanced over to her side where Yoshime and Clef were busy checking over the prone young boy, the rest of their group carefully tending to their own injuries as they waited patiently nearby. "Clef told us that Edge had been trapped in some sort of internal program, something that only he himself would be able to crack. I honestly didn't know what to expect when he said that, but I didn't have much time to think about it either back then. My main concern was getting us out alive before Toy and Yoshiki got the chance to tear us apart. I never thought that the reason that we would be able to escape would be because of him."

Double's eyes followed his partner's gaze, watching the young boy quietly sleep as he lay upon the ground. His current slumber was one of recovery, not sickness, but Double felt his own weak body tighten up warily nonetheless. Edge had fallen into stasis without warning and come out of it just as suddenly. But why? Things happened in the world for a reason, and there must have been some rationale as to why their companion had gone into such a state so suddenly.

"Why do you think that happened to Edge?" he said out loud. "We never had a chance to think about it when it happened because of all the pressure that we faced from Toy, but now that we're safe I'm wondering if there's more to this than our eyes can see."

"Clef couldn't identify the source of the program."

"And that's what worries me. He said that the problem came from an internal source, not an outside one. But when did Edge pick up such a thing? It's not like us government-issued models come with those kinds of programs installed inside of us. Furthermore, the way that Clef explained the program seemed to show that its goals were far more complex than a simple override or destroy command. Something very specific was desired from this outcome, but there's no way that we can know without having seen what Edge saw."

Kouryuu nodded as she continued to look over in the young boy's direction.

"I'd like to know what he saw in there too, but I'm not really sure if he'll be ready to talk about it anytime soon. You weren't there to see it, but he was pretty shaken up when he finally opened his eyes. For all of our pains over that bastard that Toy sent to kill us, it only took Edge a minute to tear it apart. He was as vicious as the night when he ripped open the 'Shi no Tenshi' that Toy sent after us so long ago. The only difference now was that he knew when to stop when the time came."

"Sounds like he got pretty worked up," said Double. "But I don't think that that was the goal of the program."

"Neither do I," replied the rebel. "The program seemed to be far too complex for that feat alone and the goal itself doesn't make much sense from where we stand now. I've been wondering about the actual timing of the program activation itself. Did you ever notice how conveniently Edge shut down when we needed him the most? Do you think that that was the user's intention all along?"

"Perhaps, but somehow that seems a bit unlikely. Let's say that whoever did this had fully intended to cripple us in Yoshiki's mansion, or any other battle for that matter. Let's also consider that Edge somehow had this program directly installed into his system since we're ruling out the possibility of him contracting it from an external source. However, this is where the difficulties begin to pile up. Why just Edge? Whoever did this somehow slipped it under all of our noses until the activation time, so why not infect the rest of us as well? Wouldn't that have crippled us that much more?"

"It could have had to do with a manner of time. Perhaps they didn't want to risk being discovered."

"That's a possibility," said Double. "But I'm not buying it. Even after the incident, we still have no lead on who the culprit may be. He's covered his tracks that well. From my perspective, I see no reason why he shouldn't have taken the extra risk if his goal was really to see us dead. Therefore, I think his target wasn't us at all, just Edge. Somebody wanted him and only him, but why? What's he hiding from us?"

"I'm not sure if that's the right question either," said Kouryuu as she shook her head. "He's just as confused as we are about the whole thing. That's what makes this so difficult."

The assassin sighed to himself as he laid his head back down and looked up at the sky. He had known that truth before Kouryuu even said it to his face, though it was not something that he was ready to accept. It was already bad enough that Toy was keeping tabs on their group, and now somebody else had it in for Edge in particular. Why the program? Why go to all those elaborate measures when any number of simpler devices could have been used to destroy him in a matter of minutes? What was the point?

Double frowned as he watched the white clouds pass by overhead. No, there was something that he was missing, something that he didn’t remember. Toy had indeed been tailing them, but thus far he'd fallen short of total annihilation. However, that shouldn't have happened, right? If the deity desired it, they should have already been dead. Even though the rest of them were still fairly unfamiliar with their ambiguous opponent, Asimov was already perfectly aware of Toy's capabilities after having worked under his wing for so long, and the golden warrior himself could confirm just how outmatched their own scattered band of warriors was when compared to the deity. So why were they still alive? Why had they all survived that last battle?

"Kouryuu," said Double suddenly. "What exactly happened after I blacked out?"

The rebel scrunched up her face in thought as she gazed out aimlessly into the brush.

"After Edge disposed of the last of the attack force, Yujin appeared, but he never got the chance to attack. Something happened and he got sucked up by a light that came down from the sky before he could get in the first blow. He didn't look happy about it at all though. In fact, I'd say that he was pretty pissed off if you ask me."

Double nodded and considered his companion's words. Yujin was never one to back out of a fight and it was without a doubt that he would have probably wiped the floor with their group in their present state. And yet, Toy had forced him to retreat... for a second time. Hadn't the same thing already happened once before, at Fumiya's old headquarters? Had Toy been the one to implant that device? But why? And for what purpose? Surely, the elimination of their party had been his goal for some time now, but this brought a different possibility to the table. Toy wanted something specific from Edge, but what? What was so special about him? Why go to all this trouble just for one android...?

The assassin blinked as static filtered over his visuals, and he snorted in disdain as Kouryuu reached out and tapped her finger on his shoulder.

"Looks like you're still recovering," she said. "You should take it easy at least until we manage to get to the next town. The sun's out now and the pressure’s off our tail, so one of us can just carry you in the meantime."

The killer absently nodded as the static grew stronger, pulling him under a sea of darkness. His computers were running fine now, but if he didn't conserve his depleted reserves, he'd easily risk falling back into the danger zone again. He wanted to talk more about everything that had happened, to discover this secret that had been pursuing them for longer than they realized, but for the moment he merely sealed away the newfound information in his database and waited until his body was fully prepared to function in reality once more. Something was hiding from them, something that might be able to explain why Toy had been following so diligently. And more than anything else, he needed to find out what it was so that they could finally break free into the world beyond.

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Crossing the border into Kei-Shu came without incident, but that was to be expected considering the nation's past. The borders of the country were nearly completely open due to the general lack of resources to erect the proper defensive mechanisms. Kei-Shu's struggling government was too drawn in upon itself by internal struggle with some rumors tracing the turmoil as far back as the nuclear age. Subsequent years of warfare had all but destroyed the once glorious nation as it grew too involved in its own personal issues to lend attention to the assault of outside nations, and now the only thing left to mark its once brilliant glory was the empty shells of skyscraper towers that were left to dry out in the sun. Yet, despite the nation's lack of structure, its streets teamed with residents nonetheless. Ironically, the lack of political control made Kei-Shu an ideal place for refugees from other parts of the world to settle in without fear of abuse from the government. In some ways, many considered it the last free utopia left on the face of the planet.

The sun began to fall from the heavens as the group reached the edges of the closest town that they could find. Small, makeshift shacks of broken metal and tin littered the streets as they pushed their way past crowds of rag-covered people, but as they made their way deeper and deeper into the city, they quickly discovered that it was far richer than the exterior had led them to believe. Soon, they were surrounded by teaming masses of merchants as businessmen prattled on about their wares from small booths and carts that were set up on the side of the road. A few shops had even been carved out of the ruins of ancient buildings, customers crowding in the isles to get a glimpse of the wares as heavily muscled guards kept a keen eye out for anybody foolish enough to consider thievery. The poorly constructed living spaces that they had seen on the outskirts of town quickly gave way to more elaborate structures as small house-like structures began to populate the side streets. A few drops of water dripped down on Edge from above as he waded through the masses, and he looked up in amazement to find people high up in the skyscrapers hanging their laundry from the windows, living in the abandoned towers as though they were nothing more than apartment complexes. Coming up to a large clearing near the center of town, he peered forward in amazement to find an small gorge cut into the earth spanning several meters in length as several cranes mounted on the edge fashioned from crude parts worked on hauling up scrap and materials up from the ruins down below. Men and women clattered up and down stairwells and disappeared into the dark chasm while still more emerged from its murky depths with cases of valuable machinery mounted on their backs for later examination. With a government too enwrapped in its own affairs to tend to its citizens, the people had to find a way to survive on their own. Tapping into resources of ages long past, Kei-Shu's residents made due with the things that they found buried deep within the earth's crust, harvesting ancient technology and tools for their own use as they did their best to carve out a life of their own. To some, it might have seemed like a cruel fate to be left alone as such. To Edge, he could only look on in wonder as he watched them reach a level of independence that he had never before seen on the planet of Akuji, observing faces that held neither scintillating elation nor despair, but rather a simple look of contentment, a look of satisfaction.

"We lost a lot when we left Yoshiki's mansion," said Double as he bent his neck to the side to work out stiff joints. "It's too bad that we left the hovercraft behind, but at least we still have Valkair's Orb. That was probably the only irreplaceable item on our hands. The first thing we should do is see about getting restocked. It's not going to do us much good if we don't have food and water for these two."

He gestured towards Yoshime and Iesu, both of them barely able to hold themselves up on two feet after the long, grueling hike that they had endured to come as far as they had. Edge eyed them worriedly and glanced back to his companion as he weighed their current situation.

"Don't you think that we should let them rest first?" he said. "It has been a rough day after all..."

Edge wasn't quite sure what to expect as he watched the assassin turn the details over in his mind. He himself had not even been conscious to witness the full ventures that they had endured in the past twenty-four hours, but it was obvious that the trials had been more than enough to exhaust even the android portion of their party. Though their energy problems had quickly faded away with the rising sun's generous light, Yoshime and Iesu were not quite as lucky as they endured both hunger and exhaustion to pass into Kei-Shu and out of their enemy's range safely. However, even the killer didn't seem prone to argue as he bit his lip a little and nodded in reluctant agreement to the young boy's statement.

"That's a good idea," he said, turning to tap Kouryuu on the shoulder and point towards the edge of the town's circle where a small cart was selling some sort of hard bread to an eager line of customers. "Why don't you and Terpfen take them over there to get some food in their stomachs while the rest of us get working on the bulk of the shopping? I don't think we'll run into any trouble here. It doesn't seem like the kind of town that tolerates the usual rabble that we're used to."

"Sounds good," said Kouryuu, reaching back into Yoshime's pack to procure some coins for the groceries. "We'll just wait here until you get back."

"Why don't I wait here too?" started Edge. "I haven't gotten a chance to---"

But the young boy was suddenly cut off when Double pulled a tight line across his speech with a single well-orchestrated thought, quickly curtailing the last of his words before he could finish spurting out the sentence . Surprised, he turned to look at the crimson assassin to question his actions, but something about Double's hard expression told him that it might be better not to ask now. Something was on the killer's mind, and it had enough to do with Edge so that he didn't want to leave him behind with the others.

"It might be good for you to come along with us," said Double curtly. "I need to ask you a few things anyways."

Edge studied his friend's face, looking for any sort of hint as to what may be troubling him, and when he found none he decided that it would just be best to play along for now. It seemed that whatever it was, Double didn't think it necessary to tell it to the others straightforward. Perhaps that was better, seeing as how exhausted they all were.

"... okay," he said, taking care to hide his confusion as he turned towards Yoshime with a small smile. "We'll be back soon enough anyways, right?"

Yoshime dreamily smiled and nodded as she leaned her head against Kouryuu's side in a daze, abruptly jerking back upright when she realized just how tired she really was. Edge could only chuckle, hoping that she found something pleasant in her dreams. Satisfied that his friends would be safe, he waved and walked off with Double, Asimov, and Zero into the rest of the crowd, heading to the thick maze of the market up ahead without ever looking behind.

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"Something on your mind?" asked Edge ten minutes later, watching as Double discreetly peered into the nearby rows of stands and observed carts laden with dried meats and small vegetables. "If you just needed to talk to me, you didn't have to be so rough about it."

The assassin didn't even spare a glance in his direction, but it hardly mattered as the young boy received a request over his comm-link for an incoming message.

"I've put us on an encoded line," said Double, picking up a medium-sized orange and pretending to examine it with the utmost care. "Only the four of us should be able to hear it for now. Just make sure to act normal and not cause anything out of the ordinary, okay?"

Edge said nothing back to his companion, instead moving over towards the assassin's side as he bent down to examine a box of pears.

"Is something troubling you?" he asked over their communications. "I take it something must be wrong if you're going to this extent to cover up our tracks."

"Don't look, just trace it on your radar. Go back about fifty meters and look for a guy wearing a plain, tan cloak."

Edge quickly accessed his sensors as he felt back the way they had come. Sure enough, about fifty feet back from the direction that they had come from, a single figure fitting his companion's description was waiting patiently at the mouth of an alleyway, peering through the bustling crowd in their direction as he patiently waited in still silence. He was the only one in the entire market whose attention was not preoccupied by some other task.

"I see him. Do you think he could be trouble?"

"We're not sure yet," said Asimov cautiously. "However, I've been tracing him as far back as the outskirts of town, and it's a mighty big coincidence for him to have happened to follow us this far along with the kind of consistent distance that he's been keeping."

Edge nodded as he watched the mysterious figure lay still in the midst of the bustling crowds. The tattered cloak completely covered his body with only a pair of scuffed work boots sticking out near the ground. Even the man's face was hidden by the shadows of a cowl pulled over his head so that the young boy could discern nothing of his features. However, something strange occurred to him as he watched their pursuer, and slowly he began to realize that there was more to their opponent than he had first presumed.

"He's not human," he said. "There's no way he could be if he's tracking us from that distance through this crowd."

"The thought occurred to me as well," said Double. "But it gets even better than that. Zero got a good scan of him and was indeed able to confirm that he wasn't human by the energy aura that he's putting out. I had originally presumed that we'd attracted the attention of one of Toy's tracking mecha, maybe even some device of the local government. After all, it wouldn't be unrealistic for a third party to regard us as rather suspicious considering our design. However, that guy isn't putting out the usual fields for an android either. Some of the waves we have are off the charts, registering in fields unheard of for any creatures of this planet."

"So what's this mean for us?"

"It means bad news," said Asimov. "We have no idea what it is or why it's on our tail. And..." He cleared his throat uncomfortably as his words trailed off, but quickly regained his composure as he walked over to a neighboring cart to examine a fresh batch of carrots. "... it freaked out Zero pretty bad. She hasn't said a word since we've entered the inner circles of the city."

Edge took careful care not to make his motion too obvious as he carefully glanced up towards the pigtailed girl. She was still in her normal form, and at first glance he didn’t discern any distinct problems from her calm form. Yet, that was when he realized that that was what was wrong. Why was she so quiet? It was almost unnatural for her to not be active unless she had reverted to the Demoness, and it was with her cold silence that an eerie chill began to crawl over the edge of the young boy's hide. Slowly, he let his eyes climb up Zero's arm as she held on to Asimov tightly, and when he finally reached her face, he looked on in shock as her small irises trembled uncontrollably in pools of milky white, the orbs tottering between her normal ones and those of the devil as she struggled to maintain control. Asimov simply stroked her arm reassuringly as she quietly rested her head on his shoulder, using his free hand to poke at a bag of potatoes as he casually began to barter with the unknowing merchant.

"Don't worry. She'll be okay. She just needs some time to adjust to the contact," he said over their line while his voice continued to negotiate the purchase. "However, accounting for the extreme sensitivity to cosmic-based energy sources that she's had in the past, I think we must consider the possibility that our friend over there is a lot more than a simple observer."

"Any ideas of what it could be?" asked Double as he put two coins in the hand of a trader and picked up a bag of assorted food items. "Are we talking about something on the level of the Angel or Devil-class androids, maybe even higher?"

"I wouldn't necessarily say that, but I've never really seen anything like it in my life either. Obviously, whatever it is registers loud and clear on all of our sensors, but when I try to use Zero's power to look at it from a different angle, it doesn't really appear to exist at all. It's as if it's a two-dimensional sliver of space that becomes completely invisible when it stands on its side."

Double almost snorted as he began to lead them to a group of stalls on the opposite side of the street, gently pushed his way through the bustling crowd as he set his eyes on stacks of dried meat and loafs of day-old bread.

"At any rate, we were successful enough in leading it away from the others with our ruse thus far, but this place is far too crowded to do much more. We're still not entirely sure if it's malevolent or not either, so a preemptive attack may be too rash of an option for now." File transfers abruptly lit up on Edge's screen as he received a schematic of the town's construction, and as he opened it up to his visuals, Double quickly proceeded in laying out his plan. "Here's a map of the city down to the street level. If we take the next left at the road up ahead, we can move out west and get away from the market. We don't need to find a completely clear space to confront this guy, but leaving some room open for battle is probably the best plan of action until we can know what its true intentions are."

"Sounds good," said Edge, watching on his radar as the cloaked figure moved away from his resting place and began to trail them down the street. "I'm doing my best to keep a lock on him so that I can disable his movement at a moment's notice, just in case. Just let me know when we're in the clear so that I can make a move."

The assassin physically nodded to him as he began to guide the others through the writhing throngs of people that crowded the streets, working his way around a huge work cart in the center of the road as he continued forward and veered off at the agreed upon detour. The market was far larger than Edge had imagined as he absently looked on at the makeshift shops that lined the sides of the street for over a mile. However, the crowd eventually began to thin out as the merchants and stalls began to decrease in number, and soon the once busy ruins of skyscrapers long forgotten were reduced to nothing more than hollow skeletons, the lively energy of civilization having never reached their small part of the lost metropolis. It suddenly seemed like a very empty and lonely place when the young boy thought about it, listening to the bustling crowd's ecstatic voices drown away in the distance. It was almost sad to be there, so small and frail amidst the rows of monolithic tombstones long forgotten...

Suddenly, Edge stopped in his tracks, his eyes frozen in space as his mind watched their target's small figure tail them across town.

"Double," he said slowly. "We might have a problem."

"What is it?" said the assassin, slowly turning about with his body already tense enough to rip the atmosphere in two. "Is something wrong?"

"It's the target," said the young boy. "He stopped moving."

Double immediately whirled back on his heels, tapping the side of his head as he frantically searched for their target himself.

"I must still be shaken up because I'm not getting a very good reading on our man. Can you tell me what he's doing?"

"He's still about the same distance that he was when you pointed him out to me," said Edge slowly. "But it seems like he's hesitating about something. He doesn't want to follow us anymore."

"Is he on to our plan?"

"No, he isn't," said Asimov, cutting into the conversation as he watched on his own radar. "The target has stopped, but he's still out in the open. If he suspected that there was something wrong, it would be more likely for him to try to cover his tracks and hide."

"Then what the hell is he doing?" said Double irritably, pressing the palm of his hand against his head in frustration as he tried to make something out of the static that filled his ears.

"... he's looking for something," breathed Edge, watching as the figure slowly turned about in a circle, first looking off into the side streets, and then back the way from which he had come. "Something's wrong. We're not the ones he wants, but he can't find the target that he's looking for."

The golden warrior's expression crumpled up in confusion as he watched the figure turn about in his visuals, wondering just what he had in mind.

"There is the slim possibility that he might have mistaken us for another group, but that still raises the question as to why an entity of his status would be in this area in the first place."

"No, he didn't mistake us at all," said Edge as he watched the small figure's rotating form slowly focus on the direction that it sought. "No... he just followed the wrong group when we split up. He knew exactly what he was doing... but he only realized just now that the others are still by that bread stand when we decided to go shopping. And he also knows that we are aware of his presence as well..."

As if their target had taken sudden notice of their conversation, his fleeting body suddenly split off from the path and cut through a narrow alleyway at unnatural speeds, the small blinking form on Edge's radar racing with determined purpose back in the direction of Yoshime and the others. He watched in amazement as it seemingly cut straight through building structures, completely ignoring their physical barrier as it barreled through their solid walls. No, it had never been after "them." It was after the others, and now all it had to do was move to remedy the mistake that it had made.

"Damn!!!" shouted Double, running back the way he came as fast as he could. "Get back to the circle as fast as you can! I'll contact Kouryuu and tell her what's coming her way!"

"Double, we still have no idea what that thing is," said Asimov, his flight engine already warming up as small clouds of dust began to churn up from the ground. "Do you think it's wise to just jump into this without a plan? We could try to lose it in the side streets to give us some time."

"That thing's moving far too fast to outrun, and since it's taking the most direct route to the others I'm guessing that trying to get it lost in the streets isn't going to be met with much success either," said the assassin, his body silently bristling with blades. "For now, let's just try to get back to our starting point before it manages to finish whatever it came here to do."

...

...

...

Kouryuu silently watched Yoshime and Iesu curl up against Terpfen's enormous legs and snooze beneath the lazy afternoon sun, their stomachs so full with the snacks that they had bought from nearby vendors that their bodies had little choice but to fall into a self-induced coma of sleep while they digested their food. Even Fumiya's normally cross demeanor had been reduced to a lazy gaze as he sat on the ground and leaned against the nuclear weapon's leg, dreamily gazing off into the distance. They must have had it the worse out of all of them, their human bodies not made to endure the kind of rigorous physical punishment that they had pushed through in the last twenty-four hours. Yet, none of them had ever brought up any complaint, bearing every step of the way knowing that they could only rest when they got to the end. Sometimes she had to remind herself that two in particular were still only children, for sometimes they showed a resilience that could only be rivaled by the toughest of soldiers...

"Kouryuu, you there?!"

Double's voice came out clearly over her audio system, but there was something wrong. He usually wasn't this frantic, this troubled. It was the voice that he used in battle, full of strength and vigor, full of the determination to prevail. And that could only mean that the fight had already started, or at the very least, was coming their way.

"What's wrong?" said the rebel, reaching back for the comfortable grip of her swords. "I didn't think that you'd run into that much trouble shopping for groceries."

"No times for jokes now. We've got a problem on our hands," retorted the killer. "We were being tailed earlier, but it looks like the guy's target was a lot more specific than our party. We tried to lure him away, but he caught on to us pretty quick. He's headed your way right now, and damn quick I might add."

Kouryuu's head jerked up as a sudden crash rocked the earth beneath her. In the distance, the crusted remains of a twenty-story building suddenly began to wobble on its foundation as broken glass and steel sprayed in a shattered hail across the market. It didn't take long for the entire structure to lose its integrity as it slowly began to bend to the side and topple towards the ground, and as the scattered screams of a panicked crowd filled the air with their terror, the rebel quickly freed her shining swords from their scabbards and filled them with the blue glow of plasma energy.

"Is that him?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"He's making quite a ruckus, isn't he?"

"Ordinary punks don't knock over buildings," she shot out, pushing the trampling masses out of the way so that they wouldn't be overcome by the sheer numbers of the crowd. "Is there anything I should know about this guy?"

"Unfortunately, you know as much as we do," answered Double. "We weren't able to get a good look at him before he took off, but obviously it's safe to say that he's strong enough to be a significant threat. Keep your guard up and hold him off for about a minute. We'll be there shortly."

"Okay," said Kouryuu, and cut the comm-link free as she watched the distant trail of destruction creep closer with uncanny speed as their opponent plowed through a couple apartment complexes. Was it an android? That was certainly possibility, but it would have to be a pretty strong one to plow through that many solid objects at that kind of speed. At the very least, she was doubtful that it was an agent of Toy or Yoshiki. There was no reason why those two would send out a unit this strong simply to track them through the open market across the border. As targets, they were quite obvious. They would have sent an assassin, not a tank. However, whatever it was, it didn't seem to be interested in the others. Why would it only come after them?

"It looks like they're getting stronger," spoke up Clef suddenly, startling Kouryuu and nearly making her drop her blades as she whipped about in his direction. "Perhaps our last couple escapades drew more attention than we anticipated."

"What are you talking about?" said the rebel irritably. "Do you know something that I don't?"

The small child's face looked up expressionlessly at her without emotion, but the deep emptiness of its eyes still sent a chill running through her body nonetheless.

"I see that you've neglected to observe your sensor's readings before jumping into the fray. I think you'll make some interesting discoveries if you compare this one's readings with ones that we've encountered in the past. Surely, the intensity differences are drastic enough to offset one's initial presumptions, but you can still easily tell that the wave patterns are similar enough so that it must be related to the others."

Others?

Kouryuu quickly accessed her computer and widened her vision to the entire market area, grimacing in silence as an enormous output source lit up on the map. It only took a second to cycle the approaching creature through her spectrum filters, and when she finally finished reading the outputs, her eyes widened in shock at the results that stood before her.

"A Shiken?" she said, and whirled about towards Iesu as he sleepily rubbed his eyes upon awaking from his mid-day nap. "Then he's the whole reason it tracked us here, isn't it? He’s the one they’re after..."

Clef said nothing as he watched a small building on the edge of the clearing abruptly rip itself apart from the inside, concrete flying everywhere as huge chunks of the structure rocketed through the air and crashed all about the plaza. A quick glance backwards showed that both Yoshime and Iesu had finally woken up from their afternoon nap, however startled they might be. If it really was a Shiken, then Iesu was in the greatest danger at the moment. Keeping him safe would be the number one priority, but where could they hide him in this sea of a mob? Furthermore, would it even help? Double had said that their target had been able to home in on its prey from across town and even now it was plowing through entire skyscrapers in order to achieve the straightest, most efficient route to its goal. Approaching it head on was another option, though it was probably not the wisest. She had never been the best tactician, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that her meager skills probably would matter very little against something that could demolish an entire city block in seconds.

Before she could consider their next move, she abruptly noticed a single, still figure standing out amongst the frantic ocean of fleeing spectators out of the corner of her eye. A heavy coating of broken concrete dust quickly labeled him as the one who had caused the uproar, his tattered cloak covered entirely with the rubble of his previous achievements. Only a pair of black boots were visible from beneath the shroud. Otherwise, every inch of his body was covered by the heavy tarp that lightly blew in the wind with even the shadows of his cowl concealing the very contours of his face. Kouryuu said nothing as she kept a close watch on his movements, waiting for any sudden moves that could prove a danger to the others. This one had already shown that he was extremely dangerous and very powerful, but there might be more behind his abilities than he was letting on. Best not to judge him until they knew the full extent of his power. Underestimating one's opponent was the worst thing she could do in the heat of battle.

"Nuke him if you must, but only if you can do so without endanger the civilians," said Kouryuu as Terpfen's lumbering figure walked up to stand by her side. She could hear the nuclear device's enormous gattling gun swiveling into place as the artillery tried to find a lock on its target, and the giant android simply nodded in response as it acknowledged her response.

"Understood," he said, his dull gaze never wavering from the Shiken's frayed figure in the distance. "I am currently encountering difficulty properly locking on to the designated opponent. However, I will not initiate a nuclear device unless the circumstances are cohesive with your given parameters."

The rebel nodded to herself as she carefully watched their enemy. A jamming device? That could very well be a strong possibility, more so if they had anticipated Terpfen's nuclear abilities in the first place. Thus far the Shiken had developed a limited amount of collective intelligence, but what if it had the ability to evolve into something greater than a simple cooperative goal? What if they had the ability to learn from each collective failure so as to accumulate data and properly prepare for each consecutive assault on Iesu's life? It was a strong possibility; and none of them actually understood the nature of these mysterious beings yet. However, for now she simply had to focus on holding this one off until the others arrived. If she could accomplish that much, then maybe they might live to find out the answers to those questions.

^YOU STILL PROTECT THE BOY. WE HAVE WARNED YOU OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS^

Kouryuu was almost taken aback by the words that boomed through her head. Previous encounters with the Shiken had revealed only limited speech patterns, but this one seemed to be far more capable of communication in comparison. Were they learning? Were they evolving into something far beyond what she had ever imagined them to be?

"... you still haven't told us your reasons for your hunt," said the rebel hesitantly. She wasn't quite sure what she meant to do by trying to reason with it, but if it was capable of this much speech, then it was worth a try. If nothing else, it might just give them the time they needed for the others to arrive with backup. "You honestly can't expect us to hand him over without any explanation from your side whatsoever."

^WE DO NOT NEED TO EXPLAIN OUR ACTIONS. YOU ONLY NEED TO ACCEPT THEM^

The ground shook with tremors as the figure launched itself forward through the air, a deafening roar filling the atmosphere from a powerful force that nearly knocked the rebel to the ground.

"Terpfen!!!" she shouted, trying to keep her footing as she peered desperately through the clouds of dust.

"Understood," said the behemoth as his gun barrel began spinning at incredible speeds, launching volley after volley of lead in their enemy's direction. However, none of the shots hit their mark, the cloaked figure winding around every single bullet at a velocity that their eyes could only barely track for themselves.

"He's too fast for the gun," said Kouryuu to herself, watching as it quickly closed in on their position. "What about a nuke?"

"The target's current movement patterns would make a tactical nuclear strike inadvisable at the moment," said Terpfen, and the rebel silently cursed to herself as she brought her swords out in front of her. There wasn't much that she could do at that point, and if this thing had no problem toppling buildings and dodging bullets, there was little chance that anything she had in her arsenal was going to slow it down. Yet, there were a couple people at their back that were still depending on her, and that was all she needed to hold her ground as she watched the raging monster approach between her shining blades.

However, before the Shiken got within her range, a thin beam of golden energy shot down from the heavens and traced a thin line along the ground before her, bringing the creature to a halt as an enormous crack opened up in the earth at its feet. Its hood quickly faced up towards the sky to take in its new opponent, but before it could even consider a proper reaction, Asimov brought his left fist about in a vicious hook to its face that bounced its head off the ground with a sickening crack, the others quickly landing between their enemy and their friends to ward off any further attacks.

"Good timing," said Kouryuu in between quickened breaths, keeping her eyes steeled on their opponent.

"I don't know what you guys saw before, but it's at least fast enough to dodge bullets. I don't know if I can even touch it if that's what it comes to."

"Don't worry," said Double with a grin, his forearm already elongating into a thin sword as he carefully watched his prey pick itself up from the ground. "We've smacked around a couple of these guys before and I sure as hell don't see why we can't do it again. We've got everybody here too. Maybe this thing doesn't fare too badly against one or two opponents, but how about all of us at once!"

Small clouds of dust fell from the Shiken's tattered robes as he stood up once again, showing absolutely no sign of physical damage as it motionlessly observed its quarry. However, it showed neither fear nor worry at the abrupt arrival of the other warriors, and the rebel began to worry whether or not they were truly underestimating its true potential.

^YOU ARE FOOLS TO BELIEVE THAT MERE NUMBERS WILL HELP YOU. AFTER ALL, IT IS NOT YOU WE WANT. ONLY THE HEAD OF YOUR COMPANION^

The air around the creature began to swirl and distort, its body becoming wholly consumed by the sudden rip in the atmosphere. It was if an invisible knife had slashed forth and tore open the ribbons bonding together time and space, and though the temporal distortion only lasted a second, it disappeared just as quickly, taking the Shiken with it.

"Wha---?!" exclaimed Double, carefully inching towards the area where their enemy had disappeared. "What just happened?!"

However, Kouryuu had already whirled back towards Yoshime and the others with both blades flaring. She had about as much of a clue about what just happened as her companion, but there was one thing that could not be doubted. The Shiken was after Iesu, not them. If they could keep their eyes on the boy, then their enemy would surely show its head as well.

Unfortunately, by the time she realized the connection, their enemy had already slid out of the void and was rocketing towards its prey. The rebel lashed out with her laser wires in desperation, hoping to entangle it before it could reach the boy, but it slid around the bonds as easily as it had the bullets, and she was forced to helplessly watch as it continued to slide along the ground with uncanny agility towards its goal.

The ground beneath the creature's feet suddenly flattened itself in a massive, cracked crater as the gravitational forces around its body erupted in dramatic fashion, attempting to drag it to the ground before it could take another step towards Iesu. And yet, though the figure did not halt within the powerful field either. It simply did not fall. Instead, it paused and turned to face the green-haired young boy, the android Edge who held him in place with the power of death that had been put in his hands. And even as Edge looked on, the opposing forces ripped the Shiken's robes from his body to reveal an entity that seemed to shine with the power of the very universe, its body containing the swirling images of a million stars and dying galaxies all at once. Every inch of its humanoid form was covered with the mesmerizing sheen of scintillating brilliance, drawing his eyes into its depths with its intricate beauty, or perhaps is was not the skin of a physical being at all, but rather a hole ripped in the fabric of reality, showing forth like a shower of stars beyond. The Shiken said nothing, its own eyes burning in two perfect, bright circles like those of newborn suns as several curved spikes began to rise off of its knotted spinal cord, every last inch continuing to swirl deep with the infinite darkness of the endless space.

^WE HAVE COME FOR IESU. FORGIVE ME, FOR YOU DO NOT YET UNDERSTAND^

"Wha---?!" exclaimed Edge as his outstretched hands holding the gravity weave in place suddenly flew apart, the field that he had maintained breaking into pieces as the Shiken turned back towards the quivering Iesu. This time its body grew outwards and expanded, its head and shoulders stretching up and arcing over the cross-bearing boy as the rest of its body began to wrap out around his figure at unbelievable speeds.

"I'm getting incredibly unstable energy readings from that thing!" shouted out Asimov as the air around them began to quiver with violent reverberations, the monolithic skyscrapers shaking on their foundations as their unstable structures rocked against invisible vibrations that filled the heavens. "Some kind of buildup is occurring and it looks like it could overflow at any second!"

Edge grit his teeth as he leapt off the ground and rocketed towards Yoshime and Iesu, the latter watching in horror as the monstrous creature continued to expand its body out further as though the mysterious dome that it constructed would swallow him whole.

"An explosion?!" he shouted above the noise, watching as its body mass wildly expanded out in every direction. “It’s going to detonate right here?!”

But before he could reach them, a red blur stormed pass out of the corner of his eye, dashing straight up to the monster in a maelstrom of fire as a wave of flame slammed into the Shiken's side and pushed it out of the way just as it was about to envelop the two humans whole. Edge could only watch as Zero- her eyes still full with fear and loathing- burned a small rune directly before Iesu and Yoshime that uprooted the earth beneath their feet and pushed them out of harm's way, and the Demoness turned back towards the empty darkness in despair just seconds before the world seemed to come apart.

"It's not an explosion,"said Asimov, looking on as Zero quietly watched the Shiken wrap itself around her in a cold blanket of darkness. "It's a portal!"

A brilliant flash of light enveloped the area as the vibrations in the air suddenly turned into the roar of a vortex. Dust and debris flew everywhere as a ferocious wind pulled the rebel off her feet and she was forced to stab her plasma-infused blade into the ground in a desperate attempt to keep herself from flying away. A quick glance to the side showed her that Yoshime and Iesu were perfectly safe, having been picked up by Terpfen whose older model and relative distance was apparently a bit too heavy for the newly formed whirlwind to topple. However, she had to quickly remind herself that they were no longer the ones who were in immediate danger, and it was as she glanced back towards Zero that she finally saw the enormous portal of trembling, swirling chaos that the Shiken had transformed itself into. Every single bit of matter that wasn't tied down was drawn towards the gaping maw that ominously hung in the air with voracious hunger, and directly in front of the vicious tear that their enemy had transformed itself into was Zero, her claws digging desperately into the earth as she attempted to resist the pull of the vacuum in space. Yet, it was obvious that it was a losing fight, and even as one of her arms pulled free and flailed up in the air along with the rest of her body, Asimov leapt forward without hesitation to pull her back.

"Zero!!!" he shouted above the din, and though the Demoness was still busy digging her claws into the earth to hold herself steady, she looked up towards the golden warrior anyways, her eyes filled with distant sadness and anxiety beyond their cold exterior.

"Asimov," she said in an almost uncharacteristically gentle voice over the comm-link. "Leave me. This portal was meant to destroy Iesu, and there is no doubt that its destination will probably destroy me as well. I am too caught up in its pull to escape, but you can still save yourself. So please do so... for me."

"Goddamnit!!!" shouted Asimov as his body shimmered with his absorption aura, his feet beginning to trail flame as he sprinted towards the black hole with the pigtailed robot's speed. He nearly tripped and fell when Double grabbed him by the arm, forcefully jerking him back and staring calmly in his face.

"Don't do it, Asimov," he said sternly. "If you go in, there's no telling--"

"Let me GO!!!" roared the golden warrior, and slammed a fist full of kinetic energy into the assassin's face so hard that Double flew back a full twenty meters to the very border of the black hole's vacuum influence. Without a second thought, he turned and ran towards the sliver in space again, watching in despair as his companion's fingers began to slip forth from the ground. And just about as he was about to reach her, tearing up the earth with the speed of a falling star, the Demoness' sharpened fingertips were torn from the broken earth beneath her, her body tumbling into the swirling darkness of the abyss.

Asimov leapt out in desperation as he jammed the spiked armor on his elbow into the ground with one arm and wrapped his digits about Zero's wrist with the other. Her legs had already entered the gapping maw of the portal, rendered almost completely invisible by the foggy haze that curled within its innards. However, he still refused to release her, gritting his teeth in frustration as the undeniable force began to tear his single root from the ground.

"It's okay," said Zero softly, looking at him with gentle eyes. "I sensed this one's energy long before we met it, and I know where this portal will go. Iesu was meant to be punished for his sins, and there is only one place where that might be carried out properly. You will die if you go there. Leave me be so that I can know that you will still live."

"Don't talk like that!" seethed Asimov fiercely, tightening his grip on the pigtailed girl's arm even as he continued to lose his own on the ground. "We'll get out of this together!"

"You... saved me once already, and now that I have saved Iesu's life on my own, perhaps I can atone for this evil spirit within me. I am, after all, only a robot. You should not grieve my disappearance from this world."

"No!!!" shouted Asimov, and this time, the passion in his voice was so fierce that Zero's eyes lit up like the sun, a touch of broken innocence tinting their corners as her true self listened to her friend's words. "Don't say things like that. You're more than just a robot. We all are, and I refuse to let you die now or ever! I won't ever give up on you, Zero, never. So don't give up on me, because as long as I know that you're still there, it doesn’t matter where we go. I will come back for you. I will be there for you."

"Asimov..." said Zero softly.

And the dusty earth quietly broke apart, sending Asimov and Zero deep into the chasm of dusk.

...

...

...

"Asimov! Zero!!" cried out Kouryuu as she watched the two disappear into the darkness, and she cursed herself for not being able to save them. For not being able to do anything more than watch them go. "Edge! Is there any way you can generate a field strong enough to pull them back?"

"I've been trying ever since that thing opened up, but it's distorting the local energy fields to the point where my power is useless!" said the young boy a couple meters away.

"Damnit!!!" said the rebel as she glanced about to calculate their losses. Luckily, Yoshime, Iesu, Fumiya, and Clef were all safely held down by Terpfen, who himself had had enough brains to stay a fair distance away from the black hole. Double also seemed to be okay, despite the fact that he was only now picking himself up from the ground. It was probably just lucky coincidence that Asimov had hit him far enough away so that the portal didn't suck up his limp body. "Double, how are things over there?"

"Fine, just a little bit of broken pride," muttered the assassin as he nursed his jaw carefully. "The bastard didn't have to hit me so damn hard. What happened to him?"

"Both he and Zero got sucked up by the portal. I have no idea where that thing was designed to take them, but I can't find any trace of either on my radar anymore. It’s as if they simply disappeared!"

"I think we might have another problem on our hands too," said the killer as he watched the mass of swirling chaos closely. "If my sensors are correct, that gate is weakening as we speak. Whatever energy the Shiken put into originally making it is wearing down fast, and I'd say it's going to spend itself completely within the next couple minutes at best."

"Are you saying that this portal, quite possibly the only way we'll be able to reach Asimov and Zero's destination, is falling apart?"

"Unfortunately, yes. And we still have no idea where it goes."

Kouryuu said nothing as she looked back towards the twisting tear in space. Two comrades missing in action, the result of a trap that none of them but Zero had been able to see. Iesu was safe and if what Double said was true, he was probably no longer in any sort of immediate danger since there seemed to be no trace left of the Shiken after it accomplished its transformation. But where should they go now? What should they do? Every instinct in her as a rebel wanted to say that they needed to save their friends, that she should jump into the portal after them and bring them back at any cost. And yet, her instincts as a warrior told her to cut her losses while she still could. They might already be dead for all she knew, and it was not going to help anybody if she jumped into a chasm of doom as well. If she was alive, then she could help the living. However, she could do nothing if all she met was an early demise.

"Kouryuu."

Edge's voice came out clear despite the overwhelming noise of the swirling darkness, and when she turned to face him, she already knew what he intended to do from the steady look in his eyes.

"I want to save them," he said, and Kouryuu returned his grave look with one of her own.

"I know. None of us would have wished this to happen to them. However, do you know what you're saying? Do you know what that entails?"

"I know," he said with a confidence so bold that the rebel was inclined to believe him instantly. "We don't know where that portal goes and we have no idea of predicting what will happen to any of us once we step through it. We have no sure way to ensure that we’ll make it back alive. However, I won't let them go so easily either."

"And why not?"

"... because they're my friends."

And Kouryuu simply nodded.

"... yeah, I know." Maybe it was only natural that the 'human' side of her won over the 'soldier.'

She glanced back towards Double and made a quick motion with her hand for him to come over.

"What about you?" she asked. "Do you have any objections?"

The killer simply shrugged.

"None at all," he replied. "If nothing else, I look forward to saving Asimov's ass just so I can return the favor," and rubbed the side of his face out of sheer embarrassment. The rebel nodded in understanding before quickly dashing over to Terpfen and placed a small palm-sized disk in his hand that she procured from her belt.

"This device is specifically locked on to my energy signature," she said. "Once we go in that portal, you're probably not going to be able to get a response, but it should start going off once we come back out again. I want you to take care of the others while we're gone since it's far too big of a risk to take them with us on this trip. Once this beeper starts blinking, you should be able to track our location to pick us up. Got it?"

If they came back...

"Understood," replied Terpfen dully, and Kouryuu gave him a pat on the arm, confident that he would do his job.

"Kouryuu," said Yoshime hesitantly as she looked up at the rebel. "Is everything going to be okay? Are you really planning to go in there after them?"

And though the rebel did not truly have the confidence to say that they would be able to come out alive, she smiled nonetheless, grabbing the girl's shoulder with a firm hand of assurance.

"Don't worry about us. You know we can take care of ourselves," she said. "Besides, as long as you're here, we have every reason to come back, right?"

Yoshime just gave a sidelong look at Edge and smiled, watching as the young boy grimly stared at the face of the black hole in silence.

"Yeah, I know," she said, and looked back up at Kouryuu. "We'll be waiting for you. And don't worry too much," she said, hefting her rifle in her hands. "I'll make up for you guys while you're gone."

Kouryuu beamed as she patted her on the shoulder one last time and turned about to face the others. Surely, Yoshime would be okay. She had enough courage for all of them. All that they had to do now was bring their friends back safe, and they would come home out of sheer willpower alone.

Edge just nodded as he, Double, and Kouryuu took off at a sprint towards the ripple in space, plunging into its murky depths without a word with blades bared and ready for battle. They knew not where the path might lead them, and they knew not if their friends were even still alive. However, that was not what mattered. What mattered was that there was still a chance that everything could be all right, and as long as that chance was still there, they would grasp it in their hands and hold on tight for all their were worth. That was the way they had chosen to live their lives. And none of them had any regrets as the light of the free world twinkled out behind them, the portal to Akuji closing in on itself and becoming one with the darkness.

...

...

...

"I didn't cry... not even when God turned his back on us. When we were cast down among humans, even then, I didn't shed a tear. But when he took away our wings, I couldn't help but weep."

---Achmode, Min-Woo Hyung's "Priest"

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...

...

She could hear the world burning all around her, the sounds of chaos filling the air with the screams of tortured souls. The intense heat licked at her metallic hide like the living tongues of disgusting beasts who wished to devour her whole, but no matter how she tossed and turned, there were always more to lap at her side. She did not want to open her eyes. She did not want to see this horrible place that she could feel beyond her mere field of vision. Yet, she already knew what it was, for deep inside her soul resided the Demoness- cringing in fear, rejoicing in pain- for that lonely spirit within was already familiar with this realm that she called home.

Zero's eyes gently opened up, instinctively flinching away from the hot coals beneath her that spouted crimson flame every few seconds. The heat was unbearable, reaching temperatures that surely would have choked a human to death in seconds. Yet, her body simply molded itself to adapt to the environment, her armor growing thicker and her fingertips extending into sharpened claws before her very eyes. The earth trembled all everywhere she looked as a dull light bathed the heavens in red. Lumpy shapes seemed to float up in the sky in grotesque forms of hideous mockeries of twisted flesh and distorted organs, but none of this seemed to bother this realm's inhabitants in the least.

No.

This was their world. This was their little slice of heaven.

Her vision grew a little clearer with every passing second, but she was still weak from the journey, her eyes having trouble taking in the giant, hollow mockeries of human skyscrapers that stretched out above her head. The only difference was that this was not the human world, and each enormous structure had already been molded in the likeness of something much more sinister, their black twisting spires reaching up into the crimson sky and spouting the forbidden flames of a different world from their turrets. All around her, the earth quaked and groaned in pain as thousands upon thousands of disheveled beasts trampled about and screamed in joy. Some of them looked like terrifying mutations of the human shape. Others she could not even put a name to at all, fading in and out of existence as their physical bodies tore apart and came together again and again in painful temporal distortions. All she knew was that these creatures had congregated here today to celebrate the arrival of a fleshy new soul into their world, and as she watched in a dazzled reverence, Asimov's limp, unconscious figure was lifted into the air upon a crudely made cross of iron girders, his palms sparkling with electricity from the gaping holes that the steel spikes rammed through his hands had caused.

"Asi-chan..." she whispered, reaching out in his direction, but she was too weak to move, too weak to protect her companion. At that moment, all of her strength, all of her powers meant nothing, and as the demons howled in delight at their battered prey, the best she could do was simply crawl to her knees in vain, straining against her weakness as her systems began to rebel against her commands.

Her knees suddenly buckled down without warning as a massive weight fell upon her back. She could feel the creature's foul breath snort down her neck even as she resisted its bulbous body, but in the end she could do little more but twist her head around to stare up at the twisted creature. Though the torso itself was close enough to a human's, the head set upon its shoulders was beaten and deformed into the shape of a goat's, it's elongated jaw cackling in delight and stretching the already tight skin over its disgustingly gaunt face. Horrible eyes that saw nothing but death and lust spun absently in the creature's sockets until they finally focused down on the pigtailed girl below and grinned with evil glee. Even its floppy ears and devilishly curved horns seemed to shiver with delight at its newfound prey, and with a strength that should not have been possible for an arm as scrawny as its own, the goat-beast swiped out at Zero's neck and held her down by the throat as it rearranged its abominably corpulent gut upon her back. She could only barely see the thing's other arm lift high up into the air as she began to lose consciousness, her systems beginning to experience a massive failure as the poisonous world sucked her life dry. And when her attacker brought a heavy, stone sledgehammer down upon the back of her head, she barely felt the devastating blow at all, sliding back into the darkness and away from the light.

...

...

...

Edge awoke to a stiff humidity that almost overwhelmed him at first, his systems not used to dealing with such extreme environments without prior adjustments. It didn't take long for him to recalibrate his sensors to properly adjust themselves to the surroundings, but it was still a mystery as to why the encompassing temperatures were at such a high degree. He could actually see distortions float around in the dark, musty air as he gingerly picked himself up from the ground and looked about for his companions, Double and Kouryuu already fully awake as they carefully peered around the corner of a dark doorway. The young boy quickly realized that they were in some sort of building that appeared to be constructed in the style of the nuclear age, and though the small room that he was in was bare and broken, the cracks and burns in the floors and walls seemed surprisingly fresh, the tomb's wounds having only been a result of recent destruction.

His vision quickly coming back to him, Edge found himself surprised to find that the low crimson haze that he had thought was a mere byproduct of his adjustment to the new climate did not disappear. Instead, the sickly glow coated everything it touched like a thin layer of impenetrable jelly, bathing the world in a fog of mysterious violence unseen by the naked eye alone.

"What is this place...?" he started, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Double's hand shot up from his place at the doorway and raised a finger to motion for silence. The young boy didn't immediately understand his friend's insistence, but when the killer quickly dashed towards a window on the far side of the room in quiet, stealthy strides, he quickly began to realize that the situation was probably more perilous than he had first presumed.

"Don't bother with the comm-link," said the assassin in a hushed whisper, taking a quick moment to address Edge as he pressed himself against the wall and cautiously peeked outside. "Something in this damn place is giving us nothing but static, even on private lines. Just keep it low and watch your step. We're already deep enough in it as is."

Edge cautiously crawled across the floor careful not to make too much noise, but even then, Double yanked him to the side nonetheless as soon as he came within arm's reach and pressed him roughly but silently against the boiling crimson wall.

"You don't need to be so rough," muttered the young boy, slightly flustered by his companion's behavior. However, Double had already turned his attention back to the window, watching keenly for any sudden movements beyond the young boy's field of vision.

"Sorry," said the killer as an afterthought. "You were going to enter their field of vision at the rate you were going. Things are looking pretty bad right now. I think we're in a lot more trouble than we could have ever imagined."

"We're clear over here," cut in Kouryuu in low tones from the hallway entrance. "I don't think they'll stay put for long though since they already know that there's no way for us to get out of this place. It's just a matter of time now."

"Yeah, they're stirring in their juices over here too," said Double. "I'd say we only have a couple more minutes before they try to storm the building completely. I don't know what we're going to do then."

Edge blinked in confusion at their conversation, still completely ignorant of what was going on.

"Why the stealth game? Are we being attacked? Where exactly are we anyhow?"

The killer could only grimace as he continued his quiet surveillance of the building's exterior.

"I can't really say that I know all the answers, but the only thing that I can confirm was that we were able to cross through the Shiken's dimensional barrier successfully. All of us hit a temporary blackout upon re-entry, and when Kouryuu and I woke up we were already in this... place." He made a face of disgust as he spared a sidelong look at the barren room's cracked walls, a small trickle of respect and fear coming out of his eyes for this foreign world that confused him so. "We barely had time to scoop you up and retreat to the upper levels of this building, and from where we're standing right now, it looks like the local natives are not planning to be very hospitable to our arrival."

"Natives?" questioned Edge, and this time it was Kouryuu who answered his inquiry, her voice shaking a bit as she drew her swords from their scabbards.

"I had no idea that the Shiken had been planning this... no idea that this is where they wanted to condemn Iesu for the rest of his life. Maybe there's something far more sinister about them than we first thought, because only a complete monster would punish that kid by sending him to this hellhole..."

The young boy gingerly moved near the other side of window, peering around the cracked, wooden rims and into a world consumed by blood and fire. Ancient, burning towers of civilization plagued the broken concrete streets, the gigantic structures resembling the cold tombs of the nuclear age that he had glimpsed at back in the town he had just left. It might have been a normal, human city if one took it in simply from the perspective of its layout. However, the decaying civilization had long since been condemned to a much more dreadful fate, and Edge could only look on in horror as the corrupted, black earth writhed up and wrapped its ebony tentacles about the brittle monuments to bend them around to their own contorted and twisted desires. Dozens of deformed skyscrapers gave way to fiery volcanoes in the distance, trails of yellow, molten rock twisting about the broken visage of a civilized world and seeping deep into its veins like an unstoppable poison. Yet, the pollution did not stop there, for when Edge slowly realized how deeply the scent of blood filled the air, he looked up only to gape in fright and awe at the pulsating organs that covered the sky like a ceiling of raw animal meat. Enormous veins and arteries throbbed violently from the vitals at regular intervals as the mass of bulbous flesh hung low in the heavens, writhing with as much accursed energy as the tainted earth, and though they seemed to pose no immediate threat to anyone or anything in particular, it was a horrible spectacle to the eyes regardless. Just as Edge thought that the putrid wasteland could shock him no more, he looked down to see the 'they' that his friends had been referring to earlier. He had almost not noticed them earlier, their numbers so vast that they covered every inch of the shattered streets below with their bloated, deformed bodies. Hundreds of thousands of mutated creatures roamed the streets in vicious crowds that lashed out violently at one another if given even the slightest jostle. Some appeared to possess an upright walking form as a base for their structure while others were completely incomprehensible as to what sort of grotesque monstrosity they were supposed to be. Gigantic lolling eyes without pity or emotion stared up at him with a hunger that craved only brutality and pain, and Edge immediately knew that these bickering, ferocious beasts would know no fear if they indeed were the ones who sought their deaths.

And finally, he saw the humans. It was difficult to spot them at first, their numbers comparatively sparse compared to the freakish masses that roamed the ground below. However, their existence slowly became more and more apparent as Edge studied the enormous crowd down below, their tortured screams gently rising above the howls and cries of the chaotic legions in a harrowing choir of unbearable magnitude. Razor sharp wires strung some of them between the breadth of buildings in intricate webs, the silvery threads cutting into their tender flesh as a minotaur joined his companions from a nearby skyscraper to chortle cruelly at the prisoner's misfortune. Many were torn apart by the ravenous crowd down below, shards of bone and bloody bits of gore flying in every direction as an orgy of feasting and rape literally tore their bodies to shreds along with a few unlucky misfits who happened to be caught in their comrade's path of destruction. Yet, those dismembered souls were not so lucky so as to face the merciful thing known as death, for from only a small drop of blood or a scattered piece of flesh would those people grow out once again, the devils waiting patiently as their prey birthed up from a small ball of putrid meat into a new, naked shell for them to play with at their leisure. And as soon as their eyes fluttered open into consciousness, the gluttonous revelry would begin anew, each human violated over and over again in a twisted vision of endless death and suffering.

"I thought this world existed only in nightmares and fairy tales," said the rebel as she kept a close eye down the darkened hall, the sounds of slippery meat and delighted growls welling up from the distant stairwell. "I thought that only people like the heroes of legends would ever have to see these kinds of monsters up close."

"Wh... what are they?" whispered Edge, backing away from the windowsill in fear, eyes crawling over to his friend's position by the door. "What do they want?"

"I can only make guesses as to what they really are since no modern technology or philosophy has been able to explore their depths since the nuclear age," said Kouryuu. "For most, they are creatures who exist only in our minds now, remnants of their existence appearing in stories meant to frighten little children into being good. But if what we see before us is indeed a reality, then somehow that Shiken was able to open a doorway into a forbidden realm that should have never been introduced to our eyes. Those things you see out there are creatures of magic, beasts who had been sealed up in this pocket realm long ago to prevent them from raging upon the normal plane of reality. And if you take a look at your sensors, you'll also notice that it's the same kind of energy that resides within Zero's body, an effect that resulted from the spirit that Asimov sealed within her before."

"Zero---!" exclaimed Edge in a hushed voice, and when he accessed his computer to observe the overwhelming populace that surrounded them in their small apartment, his voice caught in his throat and drowned out his words in a sea of helplessness, his body unsure of how to move against the devastating army of doom that had gathered at their gates.

"Wait a minute," said Double cautiously, averting his eyes from the window. "Are you trying to say that we're in..." He trailed off weakly, not quite sure of how to finish the sentence. The completion was never truly really required though, for Kouryuu had already clearly understood what he meant by his unfinished inquiry.

"I cannot tell you what such a place would be like or if it even exists. However, I have seen many cruel and horrible things in my life, and none of that even compares to the things that are happening outside this room."

The assassin's eyes narrowed as he grit his teeth and let his body ripple with frustration, the ends of his hands quickly morphing into knives as his liquid metal body prepared for battle.

"Why would the Shiken create a portal here? Its intentions were all preplanned too. It fully intended to bring Iesu to this place from the start! But why? What the hell are they trying to do?"

"I don't think we have any time to worry about that right now," said Edge as he began charging up his gravitational field, his eyes glazing over his radar as blips began to pop up all over his screen. "We're going to have to deal with this horde first before we wonder how we can even get back to our world."

Kouryuu cursed as she pulled a small cylinder from her belt and flung it around the corner, quickly moving away from the entrance as an ear-splitting explosion rocked the hall seconds later in a hail of shattered rock and dismembered flesh. None of it seemed to convince the demons that had been stalking them to back down though, and even though the first wave of their brethren had been torn apart by the rebel's explosive device, others eagerly leapt forward to fill their place, falling over each other through the doorway in bloodthirsty effort to satisfy their own animal desire to kill. The first of their numbers were met by a powerful blast of gravitational energy to the face, Edge's features contorting in intense concentration as he thrust his hands forward and willed a wall of force to slam into his enemies head on. However, the effects were not as adequate as he had hoped them to be, and he was forced to watch in vain as the front lines simply cracked their broken necks back into place with vicious grins, their unblinking eyes never changing from their round stares of bestial hunger.

"I'm having trouble controlling my powers here," said Edge as he began to back away from the oncoming mob. "Something about this place is different. The gravitational field feels as though it’s a lot tougher to crack than the one on Akuji."

"Then let's back off for now," said Double as he grabbed the young boy's arm and began dragging him into an adjacent room. "Neither I nor Kouryuu have the power to hold off this many goons at once, so we'll need to think of a plan if we're going to get out of here alive." His arm quickly extended into a long, silvery lance as he lashed out at the ceiling and quickly tore a hole several feet in diameter through the upper paneling and up to the next floor. Without even waiting for his companion's agreement, he roughly flung Edge up through the opening and quickly followed up himself before reaching back down and helping the rebel through the makeshift escape shaft. "We're pushed up against a corner for now. As you saw out that window, we might as well hand ourselves to that mob on a silver platter if we go down. I don't know what we can do if we go up, but it might be able to buy us a little time to figure out some sort of plan."

Edge nodded as the assassin sprinted out of the room and headed towards the stairwell down the hall with his two friends in tow.

"This impediment on my abilities may only be temporary," he said. "If I can adjust my settings to match those of this world, I should be able to use my full potential regardless."

"How much time will that take?"

"I'm working on it right now, but I really can't say. It could be five minutes or twenty. I need to figure out exactly what’s preventing me from utilizing gravity in this world before I can access my full power."

"That could be too late," said Kouryuu as she flew up the flight of stairs behind the others, taking time every so often to chuck another small canister back down the stairwell towards the howling armies at their heels, explosions rocking the vertical hallway every so often as cries of eternal pain rose up from the depths below. "Granted, it'd be a lot of help, but we need to think up of another plan just in case it does come down to close-range combat with these guys. Any suggestions?"

Double barely shook his head as he continued pounding up the stairs, and from the sound of things down below, the horde was gaining on them despite the diversions that the rebel kept flinging in their direction.

"There's so many of them that they could easily afford to just push us off the top of this building by sheer numbers, and I really don't think that they're going to care about losing their lives from the way I've seen these bastards act down below," he said. "However, we might have a slight chance if my observations have been correct. This building seems to be closely modeled after something that we might find in our own world, right? And regardless of era, human structures all need some sort of way to air out the insides in order to preserve the residents within.

"The air ducts!" said the rebel. "We can probably slip in unnoticed once we get to the top. Exit vents are generally positioned at the highest point of a building anyways. That's not going to get us out of here though."

"--- but it will allow us to lose the bad guys if we can play the hand correctly. And if it buys us enough time, Edge can recover his powers and we might be able to escape completely given some careful planning."

"I think I can do it if we can get these guys off our tail for long enough," said the young boy. "Re-calibration is taking longer than expected, but I should be okay if we can find a place to hide for a little while."

"Then let's try that!" said Double, his feet flying up the stairs even faster as he began to push his body to the limit. "As long as we can get to the top with enough time to spare, I see no reason why we can't fool them with a disappearing act!"

The building felt as though it were tipping on its foundation as they continued up the shaft, the screams of thousands of tortured souls climbing after them in a ferocious, winding stream of howls. The young boy simply did his best to ignore it as he kept on the assassin's heels, and when there were no more stairs left to climb, he spared a second of his concentration to blast open the roof door ahead of his companion, the thick piece of metal flapping wildly through the air and flying over the side of the building as the trio climbed out onto the smooth, steel surface that was hotter than the burning air itself. Yet, as the brutal pounding of the march of death drew closer and closer to their frail bodies, they could only look out across the pristine surface of the edifice in wonder, the ground sparkling like a mirror as Kouryuu looked over towards Double in despair.

"No air ducts," she said softly, and Double's face did not so much as twitch as his features remained wrapped up in a tight mask of anger and frustration.

"Damn!" he cursed, peering over the edge into the churning masses of excited bodies below. "What the hell is wrong with this place? Why can't we get out of here?!"

"This isn't our world," said the rebel, and backed away towards the edge of the building as she gripped her blades tight in her hands. The entire structure shuddered on its foundation as the weight of a thousand angry behemoths tromped up through the halls and bellowed for blood from the maw of the rooftop doorway. "It changes to fit their convenience, not ours. Maybe we never had a chance in the first place."

Double cursed again as his right arm spread out in a wide broadsword and came crashing down on the shiny metal surface with a resounding smash. It barely even scratched the surface though, and as the assassin stood back up and observed the undamaged property without a word, he slowly began to realize just how little his abilities meant in a world ruled by the devil.

A furious mass of wails and bodies erupted from the doorway as their pursuers finally reached the top of the building, and the small group of androids could only watch in despair as the assorted beasts grinned happily behind stone-like eyes and slowly began to move in to dismember their prey.

"Two more minutes," said Edge desperately, his hands balling into tight fists as he pushed his processors as hard as he could. "Just give me two more minutes..."

"I don't know if we can do that, but we'll try," said Kouryuu as she forced her blades before her in a fighting stance, doing her best to hold her ground as the monsters began to circle around them on the rooftop. A particularly obese creature stumbled forward prematurely with its enormous mouths clasping at the rebel's torso, but she barely even flinched as she slid about the abomination's side and drove her blade through its belly with one swift stroke of her sword. The mass of demonic flesh squealed in pain as the acidic odor of bile and blood filled the air, the pristine floor surface beginning to smolder as a twisted mass of tubes resembling intestines began spilling out all over the place. Yet, not one of its comrades seemed fazed by the sudden death of its kin. If nothing else, their bloodlust only seemed to increase a thousand-fold, and several spread their arms wide and screamed horrible cries in their direction as the scent of bodily fluids drove them absolutely insane.

"We'll try our best."

And that was all she said, the killer nodding in agreement at her side as his body abruptly bristled with instruments of death.

However, before the next of the deformities could attack them, a scintillating blue flame suddenly exploded from within their front ranks, driving the small group into a crazed panic as they desperately tried to put out the burning fire by smoldering it against one another's bodies. Yet, the living pyre did not disappear no matter what they did, and as the long seconds passed into minutes and the other monsters began to back off in realization of what the undying flame could do, hideous shrieks filled the atmosphere with the dying, nearly half a dozen of the monsters falling to the ground as their organs and flesh were quickly burned from their black, charred bones, the only things left to mark their damned existence being their roasted skeletons and dark, putrid piles of once organic material. Suddenly, it was the demons who were cringing away from the trio, slowly backing off from the fresh corpses of their comrades as their mouths curved downwards in cowardly fright and worry. Edge watched in wonder as they actually began to crowd around the rooftop entrance and squeeze themselves back through the opening until the smooth surface was clear once again, and it was only then that they found the courage to open their mouths to ask what had just happened.

"It wasn't me," said Edge, staring at the confused looks on his friends’ faces. "I'm still trying to calibrate my system. I don't even have the energy to spare for an attack right now if I wanted to."

"Well, it sure wasn't me, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't you either, Kouryuu," said Double as his eyes remained unmoving on the black piles of the creatures who had once been their enemies. "But then who did it? And why?"

"Perhaps I can answer those inquiries for you, sir."

The assassin whirled about at the sound of the smooth, masculine voice, his arms already sharpening into wicked points as he prepared to fight another battle should the need arise. However, what he found waiting behind him on the edge of the building was not a monster at all, but rather a man, tall and elegant in a full, black cape that billowed out about his shoulders and down his back. The thick clothes on his chest and the baggy pants over his legs were of a good weave, but the style seemed to be far too outdated to belong to anything from Akuji, and the leather on his boots and belt straps seemed to have lost most of its luster long ago to many years of age. Long, thick spikes of forest green hair adorned his head in a small curtain of bangs that obscured his facial features while others jetted out up and over his skull and pointed towards the corrupted sky. From his shadowed face came the calm stare of an experienced warrior who had already seen many horrors of the world, one of them carved in beloved memory across his features in the form of a vicious scar that ran from the top of his left temple almost down to the top of lip.

Regardless of who their mysterious savior was, the assassin wasn't ready to trust anything in the demon world quite yet and brought up an accusing arm about in the newcomer's direction without hesitation, his face already set in stone as his body tensed itself for action in preparation for the worst.

"Who are you?" he said quickly, keeping his blade pointed in the man's direction.

"A friend," said the man, raising his hands into the air to show his amiable intentions, his open palms facing the killer in a non-threatening manner. "I'm somebody who has also been trapped here like you, somebody who understands what it's like to be confined in this living torture chamber."

"And what reason do I have to believe that you're different from any of the others?" said the assassin darkly, eyes narrowing as he brought his blade a little bit closer to the man's throat. "How do I know that you're not just one of them in sheep's clothing?"

The traveler shrugged in defeat with a sheepish smile, and reached out into his robes to pull forth an eight-inch hunting knife, the leather-wrapped handle clearly showing signs of decay as he held it out by the sheath in the killer's direction.

"This knife belonged to Yan Vandt, a young acquaintance of Kai Dochira, dropped when he tried to kill the vampire king who had slain his parents. It is only a normal knife, no abnormal qualities whatsoever, but I take it that robots of your caliber can easily tell its value with your advanced technology."

Double hesitantly stared at the object for a while before reaching down with his blade's edge and slicing off a small bit of the handle wrapping. Simple contact with the ancient substance was enough for his computers to analyze its composition, breaking down its components in seconds as he began to calculate exactly what their guest had meant by presenting it. Meanwhile, Edge could only look at the man dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open a little as he tried to comprehend the things that he had just heard.

"Kai Dochira..." he said softly, the realization slowly coming to him. "Do you mean the Legendary Hero... Kai?"

And slowly the assassin also turned to look at the man in confused awe, his hand gradually morphing back into its original shape as he took a careful step backwards.

"What is that thing?" asked Kouryuu, but Double could only shake his head in disbelief.

"It's... old," he said, looking at the small piece of dusty leather on his fingertip. "It's older than you or I, older than a millennium, older than the recorded history of Akuji even accounts for. My computers can't even determine the correct age that it came from, only that it’s somehow weathered millions upon millions of years to end up in this guy's hand." The man only smiled as the killer eyed him cautiously, continuing to watch his every movement with careful precision. "... did you really mean...?"

"... the Legendary Hero, Kai?" finished the man. "Yes, I did, and the companion I referred to was one of the five legendary warriors who defied the Demon God's rule in that age. Surely, one cannot reduplicate an item of this nature, and since it is indeed from the human world- something beyond the reach of the creatures in this realm- perhaps you will take my words to be sincere now as well."

"But you're... human? How could you have survived for all those years here without at least dying from old age?"

The man simply shrugged.

"Myths say that this cursed dimension somehow lies outside the temporal space of normal time. Thus, I have barely aged a day since my imprisonment here, though it does seem that many of belongings- this knife included- have managed to suffer a bit of wear and tear. Regardless, you're the first ones who I've been able to reach in a long time before the creatures hacked you to pieces."

Kouryuu nodded as she took it all in and sheathed her swords before crossing her arms across her chest in deep thought.

"So who exactly are you?" she said. "From the age of that knife and the blue fire you used earlier, I'm guessing you've come from an age when mystic powers were still known to human beings, even though such ideas are only fairy tales in our time. But why are you helping us? And is this place really what I think it is?"

"You cans call me Matelo," said the man, gently sliding the ancient relic back in his belt. "As for this dimension, it is the holding cell of the Demon God's minions, a place outside of time and space that has gradually evolved into the horrible world that you see today. Chaos easily prevails over order here, and the only real ruling hand comes from the strongest of the strong, of which the Demon God, Valkair, has no rival. As for myself, I have somehow managed to sustain my life here with my magical abilities for more years than I've been able to count, and with my experience has come much knowledge of how this realm functions as well. I am close to discovering a method to leave this cruel place, but it has not been within my own individual power to be able to do so quite yet. Thus, I try to help the lost souls who find their way here to ask for their assistance in my quest. Unfortunately, not many are able to escape the clutches of Valkair's breathen."

"Yes, we noticed," said Edge as he looked over the side of the building towards the parting crowd of monsters below, dragging their self-regenerating prey with them in a storm of terrified screams. "So you saved us because you believe that we can help you?"

"I would be honored if you would," he said. "Since you have just seen the fate this realm holds for you firsthand, I'm sure that you are just as eager as I to return to our own world. Your aid and your freedom come hand in hand, and my only goal is to free myself from this retched abyss."

"We appreciate your offer and would love to take you up on it, but there's a reason that we've come here as well," said Kouryuu. "Our friends got sucked into this place against their will and we have no intentions of leaving without them at our side."

"I see," said Matelo, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Then if I help you free him?"

Double raised a suspicious eyebrow as he continued to keep his eyes on the man.

"Why should I believe you'd do a thing like that? So you have a knife that's older than our world's recorded history. I can't deny that you're something else. Maybe you really are that old. However, having just made your acquaintance, I'm afraid that I still see no reason why we should trust you. In fact, besides your age, I know absolutely nothing about you yet."

"True," said the scared man, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "But do you really have a choice? This dimension is as expansive as your own world, and finding your companions amongst its billions of demonic inhabitants could prove to be a bigger challenge than you bargained for. I have been here for eons, exploring every inch of this accursed land. I know where the demons gather, and I know where they will probably hold your companions as well. Besides, what reason would I have to lie? This contract would help you just as much as it would help me. I won't hide the fact that I'm approaching you only to further my own goals, but as you will soon discover as we walk through this bloody earth, even the foulest of beasts would prefer to be anywhere but here. They are your goals as well. Regardless of motive, many creatures here hold the same aspirations as we do. I simply want to escape, and I'd be more than willing to take you with me if you can give me but a small bit of your services."

Kouryuu looked over at Double as she set her jaw indecisively, scratching her head in disdain.

"What should we do?" she asked, but Double only shook his head.

"Do we really have a choice?" said the assassin. "He's right. We don't know anything about this world, and if the horde a couple minutes ago was just a taste of a few of this realm's inhabitants, there's no way we'll be able to do anything here by way of force."

"I know that trust is a hard thing to come by, especially here and from a perfect stranger," said Matelo coolly. "However, it's also the only way any of us will be able to escape with our lives. You have not been the first to doubt my intentions and you will not be the last, but the only way that people can survive in this living hell is by working together. Otherwise, they will be consumed by an entire domain that exists for no other reason but to make its inhabitants suffer eternal pain."

"I realize that," said Double, and turned to Edge. "Edge, how is your synchronization going?"

"It's not quite as good as it was on Akuji, but it's close," said the young boy. "I'm ready to go at any time."

"Good," replied the killer, and turned back to their guest. "We'll take you up on your offer then, but if you're just taking us for a ride, we'll make sure to separate your head from your body to pay back the favor. Fair enough?"

"I expect nothing less," smiled the man, and Double nodded.

"Good. Then where do we start?"

...

...

...

A buzzing sound echoed in the deep recesses of Asimov's mind, and no matter how much he struggled to grasp consciousness, it absolutely refused to cease its irritating sound. Sight came to him only reluctantly as he opened his eyes again for the first time in what seemed like years. Blurry trails bled everywhere as his computers slowly hummed to life inside his head, but no matter how much he tried willing them to work faster, the disorienting feeling didn't seem to go away. Hours must have passed since his beating at the hands of the creatures, and though he had fought as hard as he could to hold them off, their sheer numbers were able to overpower him in the end. He, a former soldier of Toy, had been defeated by a legion of beasts. Yet, there was something about them that seemed vaguely familiar... their energy signatures, the overwhelming presence that he sensed along with their inhuman power. They were not simply ordinary mutations of nature. No. Deep within their disfigured bodies rested a horrible sin that was hidden by pounds of disgusting flesh, something that he simply could not see with his own physical eyes...

"Asi...chan...?"

"Zero!" exclaimed Asimov in the darkness as sudden energy gripped his body with a renewed effort to re-establish his grasp of his surroundings. The trails continued to bleed in fabulous colors as his eyes flew open and crashed about the room of scattered pigments. It took him a moment to realize how dark the chamber actually was, but as he groped blindly against the stone floor and dragged his arms away from the jagged wall, he felt a weak tug on his wrist that felt as if it possessed the strength of a god. Another second passed before he became aware of the cold, metal chains that bound him to the wall, but luckily he was somehow able to reach out just far enough to feel a few, soft wisps of the pigtailed girl's hair before his weakened body crashed forward on the ground as his knees slipped up on some sort of slick, slimy liquid that coated the floor beneath him.

"Zero, are you okay? Zero--!"

"I'm fine," she said weakly, her voice creaking unsteadily as she spoke. It was the first time in a long while that he had heard her in her regular state, but the sheer fact that her normally cheerful demeanor had been reduced to such a sickly condition nearly terrified him to death.

His efforts to reach her doubled as he struggled to keep his eyes open. The room he was in was incredibly tiny, the dark walls closing in from all around while a single iron door lent the only light to the room through a small grate attached at face level. It was barely enough for his failing systems to handle as his fingertips groped across the floor for a firmer grip on his companion, but no matter how hard he tried, the metal chains held him back just a little too much, his face cringing in agony at the thought of how he must have looked slipping across the dirty ground like a dog with its legs chopped off.

"Please... don't," croaked Zero weakly, her hand suddenly reaching out to his and holding him by the wrist so very gently. "Save your strength. They've cast a curse on your body. You're probably barely able to stay awake right now."

Asimov only nodded weakly. She was certainly right. He really did feel like his computers would crash at any second despite the fact that all his systems seemed to be in order. Was this the power of the creature's magic? Could it penetrate far beyond the simple flesh of mankind?

Even though his body seemed to throb with fragility, he forced his fingers to wrap themselves about the girl's wrist as he pulled her towards him. Her voice gently wavered in protest of his exertion, but he did not listen, forcing his body not to stop until he had pulled her close enough to wrap his arm about her shoulder and hold her close to his limp shell as he lay helplessly against the wall. His artificial breath came out heavily, the smoldering atmosphere nearly choking him with the heavy, humid heat that hung in the air. And yet, he could feel her close to him, feel her timidly reach out with shaking fingers and wrap them around his neck and shoulder in fear, and that gave him more than enough strength to defy his dying computer on willpower alone, his own grip growing strong about her body as he fought against the overwhelming instinct to give in to another blackout.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you," ebbed his voice slowly. His mind traveled back to what may have been hours or days ago when he and Zero had first been sucked through into the hellish world where the hordes of wicked beasts had eagerly pounced upon them. She had taken the worse toll, her body completely giving out upon contact with the realm, and he had stood over her for as long as he could, lashing out at every brute foolish enough to attack them in some naked hope that he could hold them off before they ripped their bodies to shreds. His syphon system had been nearly burned out near the end, having channeled endless streams of energy through the obese bodies of the horrific freaks. Their foul blood still covered him even now, the dark, acidic substance caking over his once shining armor as its corrosive flavor bit deep into his hide. But he did not fall. No, he did not fall. If nothing else, he rose above them all, his body nailed high upon a rack of steel before he was finally toppled by his own weakness. "I'm... sorry... I’m sorry I couldn't protect you from them. I'm sorry that I couldn't be better for you," he said.

Zero only held him tighter as his words drifted away, and he could hear her sniffle back tears as she buried her face in his chest. He wasn't quite sure what to do as they lie there like helpless children, the hungry cries of sin and war welling up from outside their cell as the armies of demons welled up for another fantastic orgy of feast and violation. Instead, he simply let the dim spark within talk in his stead, his eyes barely open as he walked through a dream world that seemed only too far away.

"I don't know exactly where we are now, and I don't know if we'll ever be able to get away. But I'm glad that I'm with you, Zero, because you were the one who showed me the world. As long as you're here, as long as you're still okay, I can die in peace." He closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the hard, unforgiving stone. "I've lived too many years of my life without realizing the things that really mattered. I studied billions of stars and races, watching worlds rise and collapse under war and violence, all the while looking on with a naïve fascination thinking that my existence was outside of it all. But that wasn't the real truth. The real truth was that I had separated myself from its touch long ago, separated myself from pain, but also from pleasure. I studied life without ever tasting it for myself, and it wasn't until I saw you that I finally discovered that I too wanted... needed... something. I wanted to see you happy. I wanted to see you in a place without the war, the violence, without all the horrible things that happen to people in life. I wanted to see you grow up innocent and loved. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a world like that? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be in a place without the hate...?"

He trailed off as the white noise of death raged in the background, and for a brief moment he pictured he and Zero out across Akuji's spacious wastelands above Fumiya Sang-Wu's mercenary headquarters, an endless sky of stars spreading out over their heads like thousands of tiny worlds just waiting for the right person to reach out and take their brilliant sparks for themselves. He pictured the two of them looking up at those bright lights and dreaming like youths who knew not the sins of the world, and he smiled because he wanted to hold that memory close to his heart forever.

Even as his mind drifted back to that peaceful time, the once strong arms of the girl who had been created as one of the greatest weapons of combat to ever exist in the history of the universe began to crumple up in his embrace, her tiny, shivering body folding in upon itself as she became overcome by the grief in her fragile heart.

"I wanted to be strong for Asi-chan," she said, trembling in his arms. "I wanted to make you happy."

He simply held her tighter, cradling the little girl in his arms in a moment that ignored the world of insanity around them.

"You do make me happy," he whispered. "So please let me do the same for you."

So she said nothing as she wept against his chest in their small, small cell, the warrior drowning out the cries of a damned world with his gentle touch alone.

...

...

...

It certainly was not the first time that Double was quite glad to lack the entire human sensory system. Dark, oily water rose up to his shins as he sloshed through their murky depths in the dimly lit cylindrical tunnels that made up a vast sewer system beneath the stygian world. A slick coating of putrid slime covered everything in sight, some of it congealing in grotesque forms that might have been the housing for some sort of demonic creature. Matelo actually had to guide them away from a shelter made out of the substance more than once, the sickly green puss having been collected in the shape of a mysterious hive above their heads that was nearly as big as themselves, dozens of large, yellow insects the size of their hands buzzing about the dome with poisonous stingers attached to their rear ends that literally dripped with lethal toxins. Signs of other life littered the filthy drainpipes, but the threats never really went beyond the mutated bugs and the occasional patch of mold that had gained a movable life of its own. The dark shadows gave the impression that monsters lurked in every shadow, but the reality of the situation was that their mysterious visitor had managed to lead them on a safe path thus far. Shortly after leaving the skyscraper, Matelo had opted for navigating the realm's sewer system rather than braving the overworld's dangers. They had all been fairly skeptical in the beginning, knowing full well that they would be much more susceptible to a surprise attack in such a confined area. However, the man explained that the tunnels were actually far vaster than any of them realized, spreading out for thousands upon thousands of miles all over the realm. Monsters rarely dared to travel into their depths for fear that they would be unable to navigate their way back up to the surface again, for there was little to eat and divulge in below ground and starvation would most likely claim them first before they found anything of any use. Enormous behemoths were also rumored to prey in the tunnels, scouring the enclosed ecosystem for tiny bits of morsels to fill their enormous stomachs. Only the foolish dared to tread on their ground. The foolish, and the few who knew how to avoid their jaws.

The assassin's head swiveled around constantly in all directions, his keen eyes scanning the fuzzy, fungus covered ceilings and walls for any sort of unexpected movement. He had grown quite used to the local vegetation waving its tiny tendrils in the air. It was the sudden movements from those small limbs that lashed out to prey upon local insects that still made him shiver. The atmosphere's heavy gas content worried him as well, his computers still working furiously as he tried to decipher exactly what he and the others were walking through. The combinations of the things that he could identify were enough to make him cringe at what the stench must be like. It was little wonder why the overworld's beasts did not travel here. The air alone would probably suffocate any normal living creature.

However Matelo didn't seem to mind in the least as he continued to lead the small party in a single file line through the maze of dark paths without so much as a pause to think about where they were going. A small, emerald globe the size of his fist levitated lightly in the palm of his hand as he observed its swirling colors and changed his walking path accordingly. All he had done was touch Double's hand in order to obtain the information that he claimed would lead them to Zero and Asimov. The man said that their last contact still left powerful energy remnants that could be used to track the pair no matter where they might lie, and his magic abilities would have no problem in finding the best path possible to reach them in no time. If only things were that simple.

The killer still had a difficult time believing the wizard, no matter how sincere he might seem to be. There was something about him and his offer that he didn't like, something about the sheer convenience of their perilous situation and his timing to keep them safe. Something kept telling him in the back of his head that a human being could not survive for millions upon millions of years in this hellhole. Yet, he knew not how to prove it, and kept walking in silence as he half-pretended to be on the lookout for unwanted enemies.

His body stiffened as Matelo abruptly stopped in his tracks and whipped his body completely around with a look of alarm on his face. Without a word, the green orb in the palm of his hand winked out completely, his fingers wrapping themselves about Edge and Double's arms and quickly pulling them into a small side-tunnel as he urgently motioned for Kouryuu to follow. The assassin's instinct was to question their newly found companion as to his unexplained behavior, but he soon kept his mouth shut when he realized that the entire sewers had gone dead silent within the span of a couple seconds. The side tunnel was not large at all with only a four foot diameter and a seven foot horizontal depth before it ended in a dead end with a growth of black moss had already claimed it for itself. However, the killer was forced to ignore that as he pressed himself as far into the small cavern as he could go with the others in tow, Matelo fitting himself in near the mouth of the dugout as he quickly produced a flask from his hip and proceeded to squeeze its greasy contents out all over their bodies in quick, violent spurts. While he tried to ignore the sticky tendrils behind him that had realized that an unexpected life form was within reach and were trying vainly to rip him apart with their spiny ends, he quickly realized that the liquid that the man had so unexpectedly squirted on them was very similar to the sewer water that they had been sloshing through earlier. Surely the content of the material seemed to be a little different, but the odors that it gave off were undeniably the same. Matelo was trying to mask them in the sewer's scent. And after a few more seconds, Double finally realized why.

He hadn't even noticed the sound at first, the slick sound of slime sliding against itself so faint in the distance that it was almost invisible against the occasional rustle or drips of water. However, before he even had the chance to consider what it might be, the approaching beast that their guide had sensed was already slithering past them, its gross body completely filling the tunnel halls with its girth. The first details that came into the view was the head, an elongated beak that was as tall as the tunnel and filled with rows of razor sharp fangs. Each incisor was at least as long as his forearm, and that did not even compare to the jagged molars in the back of its maw that looked like they were capable of crushing steel. The agonizing sluggishness of its movement was almost tormenting to watch, for Double could do nothing else but stare in complete shock at the gigantic organism and take in every disgusting detail while begging with every last drop of his body that it did not notice that they were there. His hopes almost dropped when the eye slowly inched into view. The yellow lenses was placed squarely on the side of its head and nearly took up the entire mouth of the tunnel, only a few outside rays of light from the sewer's periodically placed lamps managing to shine in between the folds of flesh and bony skull. However, the thing's progress never slowed down a bit despite the fact that its pupil rotated about in vigilant watch for roaming prey, and when he enhanced his vision a little more to observe the giant organ, he suddenly came to notice the presence of several large cataracts that must have been obscuring its vision. It was probably the only thing that saved them from becoming the behemoth's next meal.

The optic organ scrapped against the side of the tunnel entrance as the monster's body pumped slowly by their hiding place, layer upon layer of ooze slipping off the slick epidermis and seeping onto the floor of the shallow tunnel. Light disappeared completely as the beast's girth blocked the single exit, and the four of them could only wait in silence as the seconds dragged on into minutes, the slime quickly rising above their waists as the monster continued to slither past their hiding spot. Finally, a few scattered rays of light filtered into the cylindrical chamber as the bulbous flesh gave way to an enormous fin-like tail that swished violently from side to side in huge sweeping motions. The assassin quietly endured the slime and moss long after the creature was gone from view, watching Matelo silently stew in the juices that it had so kindly left behind for them. A few minutes passed as the wizard simply sat contently in the pooling muck that reached up to his belt, and abruptly without any warning at all, he sloshed out of the tunnel and back into the main sewer line, the emerald globe re-lighting itself once again as he beckoned them to come out with an open hand.

"Come on," he whispered somewhat urgently. "We should probably hurry before it comes back. Sometimes they double around on a whim."

"A whim?!" hissed Double fiercely. "Why didn't you tell us that things like that were down here?!"

Matelo just looked back at him blankly, already continuing on the path that he had been following earlier without any hesitation at all. "I did tell you, didn't I? Don't worry, as long as they don't know that we're actually here, we might as well not exist in their eyes. Things get pretty nasty if they do manage to find you though. You'd be surprised how fast something that big can move once it gets a whiff of your scent."

The killer got the suddenly urge to put the man in his place in a manner that was sure to scar a lot more than just his face, but he could already feel Kouryuu reach up and tug at his slime-soaked scarf behind him, the firm but gentle motion telling him that it simply wasn't worth the effort. He forced himself to agree with more than a little reluctance, but his anger was as easily suppressed as his actions. The way that Matelo so lightly approached their dangers was not heartening at all, and he could not help but wonder what it would be like if the man accidentally 'forgot' to inform them of some future peril that could be approaching. A quick check on his computers still showed that all frequencies for his comm-link were still receiving nothing but static, and in his head he cursed bitterly while continuing to show a cold face to the outside world. He wanted to talk with Kouryuu about his suspicions before it was too late, but what could he do to let her know how much he didn't trust this man without being completely explicit about it in front of his face? By the look of her expression, she already seemed to be sharing some of the same sentiments that he did, but a mere suspicion wouldn't really mean much if this man really did intend to betray them at some point. They needed a plan, something solid that they could fall back upon just in case the worst case scenario arose. And yet, he dared not openly betray the trust of the only one who might be able to show them the way out of the hellish world. If he was wrong, then he might seal all of their fates in the abyss forever.

The party came up to a four-way crossroad where Matelo suddenly stopped and looked deeply into the small orb in his hand in deep thought. After a brief second, he turned about to the others and let the globe wink out of existence, pointing to his right with an outstretched hand and a look of determination in his eyes.

"We'll need to split up at this point," he said. "The building where your friends are kept in is protected by an unholy gate whose power source lies at another location. We can break the gate by breaking the power source, but the main problem there is that the failsafes will kick in only two-point-seven minutes after the primary guard goes down. If I understand correctly, your friend here is a gravity user, yes? If so, it would be best if he could come with me because while I am familiar with the auxiliary defense system, my magic lacks the raw power to help break past it. His power would be extremely valuable in helping to breach those final defenses, and once we recover your allies, you two can backtrack and regroup with us so that we may lay out our plans for escape from this unholy land."

"Wait a minute," started Double. "You didn't say anything about breaking up. Besides, how do you expect us to find this power source when you've been our guide all along?"

"Not a problem."

Matelo reached into the folds of his cape and quickly produced a small crystal orb about the same size as the magical item that he had used before. Without warning, the dark glass suddenly seemed to come to life in a myriad of blue light, a small, white beacon shining through the other fragments towards the direction of the tunnel that the wizard had pointed out earlier.

"This sphere will lead you directly to the energy pillar that's powering the main defensive gate. No need to worry about the location that it's marking. I've been there many times before in previous attempts to break into the enemy's strongholds. However, allies are hard to come by in this place, and I have yet to actually make it all the way past their front gates as of yet."

The assassin gingerly took the small ball from the man's hand, its smooth surface feeling comfortably warm in the palm of his hand.

"Okay, so we follow this thing's light to the power source. What happens after that? How are we going to find you?"

"Right now the orb is magically tuned to the energy signature of the barrier that we need to dismantle. Once you destroy it, I've already inserted a secondary magical command into its functions that will retune its radar to my own life energies. So once you've destroyed the target, it will show you exactly how to get back to us."

Double ground his jaw a little while he rolled the ball in his hand. He did not like having to take an unexpected detour from their path, especially when it involved splitting them up and leaving them more vulnerable than before. Their brief skirmishes before had already showed him how relatively useless his and Kouryuu's strength was against the creatures of the realm, and if Edge was going to be off with Matelo, then there was little chance that they were going to be able to defend themselves if the need arose. It all seemed too convenient, too perfect. It felt like the man intended to send them off on a death sentence, and yet he knew not how to refuse the proposal at all.

However, before the killer said anything, Kouryuu had already stepped forward and made a nod of understanding in his stead.

"No problem," she said coolly. "Will you be able to reach the gates before we reach our destination?"

"Not to worry," said Matelo. "Your route will undoubtedly be a little longer than our own, so we'll just wait for the signal to show us that you succeeded. There's no need to worry about the route to the energy source either. The sewers should run straight in that direction if I'm correct."

"Then there's nothing to worry about," replied the rebel. "We'll meet up with you again later."

The assassin was tempted to protest the ease with which his companion had accepted the conditions of their mission, but when the rebel turned to face him, he saw a look in her eyes that told him to stay quiet until they could talk in private. No, Kouryuu was certainly not stupid. She was well aware of what was going on too, but there was nothing that they could do about it now. There was nothing that either of them could do. And so for the moment, he just needed to play along and accept the wizard's scheme with as much agreement as he could muster, and if they played their cards right, then maybe there was still a chance that they would be able to get back to their world in the end.

...

...

...

"You were thinking the same thing I was, weren't you?"

Double looked back towards the rebel as they dragged their feet through the thick muck around their ankles.

"Why did you just agree with him? Haven't you found the guy at least a little suspicious ever since he's shown his face?"

"Of course I have," replied Kouryuu as she kept her eyes peeled for unknown dangers. "But what other choice is left?"

The pair hesitantly followed the glowing ball's light on a left fork down yet another long corridor of darkness, and just like they had already done for the past twenty minutes, neither soldier ever stopped to question the direction in which they were heading.

"We know nothing about this world or its inhabitants. At best, we can say that we made contact with the locals, and at worst you could probably ascern that we wouldn't have survived for more than an hour in this hellhole if that guy hadn't shown his face. If we were on our own right now, we wouldn't have the first clue as to where Asimov and Zero might be if this realm is as expansive as Matelo says it is. Certainly, he and his motives are suspicious. I can't doubt that at all. However, one thing is definitely for certain, and that's that he cannot be aiming for our death just quite yet."

"Why not?" asked Double as his brow furrowed in a knot.

"Because he specifically saved us from death already. It doesn't mean that he might not want us dead eventually, but perhaps our demise at that earlier point might have been inconvenient for him. What worries me is that he is completely and utterly unique in this place. I don't care what age he claims to come from, there's no way that I'm buying his story of survival in a pocket dimension with as many flesh-eating creatures as there are people on Akuji."

"Maybe it would have been better to force his supposed intel out of him," said the killer with a bit of a frown. "Some people are more implied to tell the truth when they have a little pressure on their backs."

"I don't think that would work in this case," said the rebel regrettably. "If the threat of a billion monsters hasn't fazed him, then I doubt that anything we do will be of much service. Also, the more I think about it, the deeper Matelo's relationship with this world's inhabitants must be. Let's consider the details. We've seen before how the freaks here are aware of their numerical advantage to the extent where they didn't seem to mind letting a few of their numbers go just to chase us to the rooftop. Maybe Matelo's hiding a lot more of his magical competence than he's letting on, but all normal human beings have certain limits. I find it hard to believe that the monsters couldn't have won out if only by way of playing the numbers game and waiting until he simply exhausted or starved himself to death. He knows a lot more than he's letting on, and right now I get the feeling that the only reason why we're still alive is because we hold the key to something that he needs for whatever goal it is that he has in mind."

"... you sound like you have a plan, but I'm not seeing it yet," said Double, and Kouryuu only nodded.

"Right now, we can't do much more than wait," she said. "Eventually, he'll leave us an opening, something that we can use to figure out exactly what's going on or where Asimov and Zero are. Once that happens, we can start moving in the right direction, but for now, there's not much more we can do except for keep our eyes peeled and make sure that we don't do whatever it is that he's leading us to do. Our ignorance of this place leaves us at a distinct disadvantage, so we need to abuse Matelo's cover of protection for as long as we can before we start making our own moves."

The assassin nodded in understanding and continued plodding through the thick water towards the soft glow of the shining light.

"What about Edge?" he asked. "Are you sure that leaving him behind was a safe thing to do?"

"Don't worry about it," said Kouryuu with a grin. "These days, he can probably take care of us better than we can of him."

...

...

...

The tunnel eventually ran its course as the rebel and assassin came up to a single dead end, the white light in the orb shining brighter than ever. The many rungs of a long forgotten steel ladder led at least fifty feet up at the end of the slimy trail, each step nearly completely overgrown by a carnivorous vegetable that had taken a liking to the subterranean environment. Double said nothing as he simply swatted the aggressive growths aside with a bladed hand, ignoring their small squeaks of protest and pain as they were cut from their perches and splashed into the water below. With each rung that he climbed, he strained his radar systems to see if he could possibly look beyond the simple manhole cover that awaited them at the top of the shaft. However, the lines of static refused to budge no matter how hard he attempted to push them aside, and finally he simply resided himself to his fate as he finished the long, vertical ascent and gently pressed his fingertips against the underside of the smooth, metal disk. There were only a few rounded holes in the manhole's surface that let through the light of the bleeding sky above, but Double knew that he couldn't possibly rely on that to show him what he wanted to see. If this was a trap, then there was no point in "melting" up to see what was out there because they would probably kill him the second he showed his face. Better to simply go out with everything he had before they realized he was there... if they weren't already aware of his position already.

A quick look down to Kouryuu showed that she was thinking the same thing, and the rebel simply gave a small nod in his direction as she pressed her feet down hard on the ladder rung and let her free hand stray back to her sword hilt in preparation for the assault. It was more than enough to let the killer know that his partner was ready for action. With a sharp jab to the underside of the metal circle, the manhole shot out of the mouth of the shaft like a bullet, spinning over itself endlessly in midair like a flipped coin while Double took the opportunity to launch himself out from beneath its shadow. The sewer ladder crumpled under the pressure of his jump, the assassin splitting the manhole cover in two with a vertical slash from his arm as he rose up twenty feet in the air with both of his arms spread wide. Kouryuu followed up soon after, her sword ringing free in one hand while her other prepared the swirling tips of several laser wires just in case a ranged attack became necessary. However, neither of them ever got a chance to utilize their weaponry, for not a single soul was waiting for them at the mouth to the underworld, the dimly lit streets rumbling in silent groans that echoed throughout their narrow, empty passageways.

The two halves of the manhole slammed back down on the black concrete with a ferociously loud clang, and the two soldiers followed soon after as their feet lightly touched back down on the ground. Double kept his eyes wary as he glanced around at the industrial surroundings, miscellaneous buildings crumbling apart amidst the presence of a few small factories that still buzzed with a light of activity in their cores. One building in particular drew his attention, a large, multistoried modern castle of enormous proportions that rose up in the distance amongst a forest of smokestacks that spewed forth a poisonous, black smoke nonstop into the bloody sky above. Judging from the way it rose up above the other structures in the area, it was probably only a couple miles away, and when Double glanced down at the small orb that Matelo had given him earlier, he was not surprised to see that the light did indeed point in the massive fortress' direction. Maybe the magician really had been telling them the truth. Maybe he fully did intend to break open the path to escape this hellish world. His brain told him that, and he rolled the flavor of it's aftertaste in his mind long after the thought rose up to meet his lips. It was his instincts that continued to drag that down with doubt, and even he did not feel like putting complete trust in the man's plan as he stared off at the clouds of gas in the distance.

"There's nobody here," said Kouryuu dully, sliding her blade back into its sheath. "It seems just a little too coincidental."

"Indeed," said Double. "Especially if Matelo's presence was the only thing keeping the creatures off our backs up until now. We still have a short walk ahead of us until we can reach that place," gesturing towards the factory. "Do you think it's an ambush?"

"Maybe, but right now something else is bothering me a lot more than the possibility of a trap. Have you checked your radar yet?"

"Not since we came out of the sewer," said the killer, shaking his head. "All I get is static in this damn place. I figured it wasn't worth the effort to keep tabs on something that wasn't going to clear up."

"Yeah, well, you might want to try it out now," said the rebel, lightly rubbing the side of her head as though she couldn't believe the things that she saw with her own eyes. "The signal is actually starting to clear up, but only in the direction of that factory. I'm still getting a dead reading in other directions, but something in the vicinity of our destination is definitely doing something interesting."

"What...?" and Double quickly accessed his own systems as he brought up his sensory programs. Sure enough, he began to get clear readings in the direction of the mysterious assembly plant, the signal growing incredibly clear directly around its courtyard area while it practically rolled over and died as he tried to trace activity further and further away from the building. But why was this happening? Every other location rendered a dead signal as a supposedly inherent trait of the environment that they were immersed in. Now that they knew it was even possible to access a clear signal, two possible explanations came to mind. The first was that the preventive haze that they had encountered thus far was an artificial blocking device utilized by the very creatures who sought their heads and that this rare light was some kind of breach in that wall. The other was that the clear signal was actually the source of an artificial creation in the midst of the blockage signal, which was the natural state of the world. Regardless of which was true, why didn't Matelo know about this? Or rather, perhaps the more appropriate conclusion to assume was that he did know and simply didn't tell them...

"What does it mean?" he said in confusion. "This doesn't make any sense..."

"Maybe not right now, but I'm sure things will become a little clearer once we reach the source of whatever's causing this," said Kouryuu, stepping out on the road towards the factory. "Something's not right about this whole thing. We just need to keep moving if we want to figure out what it is."

...

With their systems free to scan the local area, Double and Kouryuu had no problem keeping a close eye on the surrounding region for enemy units, and as though the creatures realized such a thing as well, not one even dared to show up on the fringes of their sensors. As a result, their trek through the fire-spewing mountaintops and crumbling concrete towers was a quiet and uneventful one, the pair waltzing up to the main factory's gates completely undisturbed. They had both anticipated some sort of guard to be ready at the fortress itself, but even as they cautiously passed through the entrance’s iron gate with their weapons drawn and tensions high, not a single being dared to show its face on their screens. An empty wind seemed to blow through the flat courtyard even though they could feel nothing through the heat as they tentatively stepped out onto the broken concrete, the mysterious factory seemingly functioning at full capacity despite a complete absence of light from its dark interior. It was as though they had stepped into a ghost town within the unholy city, the very signal that gave their radar light having purged the lonely grounds from the monsters of purgatory. It was disturbingly unnatural. If nothing else, it only made the earth that the structure stood upon seem that much more tainted with sin.

"There's nobody here," muttered Double, glancing about warily despite what his sensors said. "There's absolutely nobody here. Why would there be no guards to a power source that opens the path to an enemy stronghold? That doesn't make any sense."

"Perhaps somebody already beat us to the slaughter," said Kouryuu, and lifted her arm to point towards a pillar in the corner of the courtyard. "Look over there. Isn't that the source that we've been following this whole time?"

A quick glance down to the sphere elicited a quick nod from the assassin's head, but when he looked back up, he temporarily stopped in his tracks from the sheer shock of what he saw. The pillar was nearly fifty feet tall, its base and top composed of several metallic cylinders while its center glowed white with several long, white tubes that seemed to radiate with a light that defied the heavens’ crimson ooze. The entire monument softly hummed like a machine with trails of wires and tubes sticking out all about the central shafts of light. However, it was not the pillar itself that made the assassin stop so suddenly. Rather, it was the various piles of corpses that were lined up at its base, the mutated bodies of over six dozen mutants littering the grounds in several bloody piles that were almost completely unidentifiable. Each of them were twisted in ways that must have taken an extreme amount of strength to accomplish, one specimen having been ripped in half at the waist by opposing forces rather than having been simply cut in two. The thing that caught his eye in particular was the way in which several of the cadavers reached out towards the pillar even beyond the grave, their twisted, mangled hands groping in the tower's direction in a futile attempt to execute some unknown action before the last of their life was stolen from their bodies.

"Looks like somebody had fun, but I'm not detecting anything in the general vicinity that could have done such a thing," said Double. "Could it have been that pillar itself?"

"It's definitely putting out some kind of energy, but nothing on a spectrum that's harmful to us. It's not even harmful to normal human beings if my readings are correct. For all intensive purposes, the only thing that it’s radiating is normal light."

The assassin folded his arms in disdain as he turned the small globe in the palm of his hand. Was this a setup? Was somebody trying to avert their trail? The way the corpses reached out towards the pillar seemed to indicate that the creatures had sought it out to modify its function in some manner, but since it was still working perfectly well despite their deaths, the more logical assumption would be that they aimed to break it down above all else. Still, that made no sense at all. Why would the demons aim to destroy their own defensive barrier? Why would they risk their own demise to cripple their own forces...?

His train of thought temporarily derailed as a high-pitched crack gently tinkled through the air, and for a brief moment, his eyes twitched towards the empty factory, searching for any sort of suspicious movement. A second passed as he searched the windows for any hint of an interloper, but when the small object in his hand spasmed in sharp movement, his gaze quickly fell upon the orb that Matelo had put in his care as the once smooth surface began branching out in an intricate spider web of fractured splinters.

"W---wha--?" he exclaimed, and a second crack filled the silent air as a huge fracture suddenly spread out across the ball. "What's going on?!"

"It's breaking apart!" said Kouryuu, her gaze suddenly whipping about towards the pillar. "It was perfectly fine until we came here. Is the power source affecting it somehow?!"

"I don't know, but we better figure it out quick!" shouted the killer. "If this thing goes, we lose our signal back to Matelo and Edge as well as our only way out of this place!"

"I'm on it!" returned the rebel, baring both of her swords as she made a beeline for the pillar. There was only about two hundred feet between the two, but every step seemed to take an eternity to accomplish as the assassin kept his eyes glued to the orb, small shards slowly breaking off as the internal damage to the trinket became more and more severe.

"HURRY!" shouted Double urgently. "We don't have much longer!"

Kouryuu said nothing as she cleanly leapt over the closest pile of mutated corpses and planted her feet atop a second as she began winding her body back for the fatal blow. The thin edges glowed bright azure as she infused plasma into their material, the air about them growing brilliant as she made one final leap towards the small tower in a futile effort to bring it to the ground.

Meanwhile, the killer could only watch in despair as the brilliant ringing sound echoed throughout the air and the deep fractures in the small bauble finally reached through the entire diameter of the orb and broke it apart, pieces of glass flying everywhere as an invisible force ripped the small object to shreds. However, though despair was the first thing that came to mind, he suddenly noticed something else as well. While the signal of the sphere winked out of existence as the shattered pieces fell through his fingertips, two new signals suddenly flew up on his radar screen with signatures that nearly made him jump off of his feet. Both of them seemed to be coming from the factory's interior and both were incredibly weak in their intensity, but the thing that made him stop and take notice was their familiarity. He had seen each one dozens of times, having fought with their entities closely in battle before, and as his eyes whipped about towards the seemingly empty assembly plant that continued to moan with the aching sounds of production, he wondered why Zero and Asimov were in there when Matelo had told them otherwise.

"Kouryuu!!!" he cried out, looking back towards the pillar. "Wait---!!!"

However, before he could say another word, the deed was already done. The rebel’s arms let loose in a powerful blow that ripped through the metallic structure like paper, glass and steel alloy flying in every direction as the bright lights quickly winked out of existence. The top half tipped over as she cleanly landed on the other side with both swords still in hand, and she finally turned about to meet his eyes just as the remains of the broken tower fell over with a reverberating crash upon the ground.

"What?" she said with a small huff. "Are we too late?"

Double watched in confusion as Zero and Asimov's signals sputtered out of existence over his radar along with the power source's life, and just as quickly the span of his sensor range which had been opened up just a little while ago quickly disappeared as well, leaving him stuck in the darkness just as they had been when they first entered the dimension. Kouryuu immediately took notice of the phenomenon as well, and from the look in her eyes, she too had begun to realize that perhaps they had just made a huge mistake.

"I'm sure you just noticed it too," she said warily, and the assassin nodded.

"We're sent to destroy a pillar that somehow illuminates our radar vision until we tear it apart? The last time I checked, conventional power sources would probably create an interference signal if anything, not clear up an existing interference. There's definitely something more to that tower than we first thought, but first we have another issue to deal with."

"The orb broke?!" asked Kouryuu urgently, and Double simply nodded.

"Yeah, and while that does carry some bad news, it's not the kind that we expected,” he said. “After it broke, I got an unexpected reading on my radar for a brief second and you’re not going to believe what it was. It looks like Zero and Asimov are actually in this building right beside us."

"What?!"

"Don't worry, I was able to save the approximate coordinates before our sensors went out," said the killer. "However, this raises more than a few issues, the primary one being that Matelo obviously lied to us. If it wasn't obvious enough already, I'm getting the feeling that even if we had destroyed that pillar in time, the orb wouldn't have given us coordinates back to his position. But why the hell would he send us all the way out here to destroy this thing? Why is it important to him?"

"I think that's something we can't figure out right now, but maybe catching up with the others will give us a couple of answers," said Kouryuu, sliding her swords back in place. "We need to figure out a way to get back to Edge as soon as possible. He could be in danger as speak."

"Don’t worry too much about that," said Double. "As a precautionary measure, I left a ‘tracker' on him, a small piece of my own liquid metal just because I wasn't completely inclined to trust our bastard guide at the time. Let's hope that the others can shed a bit of light on our situation so we can figure out what the hell is going on. Otherwise, we may never find a way out of this damned place."

...

...

...

Edge leaned against the curved sewer wall alongside the wizard as they patiently waited for the massive barrier of crackling energy before them to be shut down. Twenty minutes ago, Matelo had led him in a direction that finally took them out of the shin-deep grease that covered most of the tunnel floors and down a drier path where the growths on the walls were not quite as aggressive as their feisty counterparts. Slowly, the cylindrical road grew dry and crusty with age, the metal growing cracked and brittle in several places along the walls and floor. And finally, the tunnel had curved outwards in a larger chamber variation, a single exit blocked by a savage trickle of white lightning that ran between two glowing machines placed on the top and bottom of the doorway. Edge had experimentally tried to shut the mechanisms down with his gravitational powers, but something around the barrier somehow disrupted his weaves before they could reach them, and he was forced to idly wait for Double and Kouryuu to finish their half of the job before they could progress any further.

"Don't worry," said Matelo confidently. "I'm sure they'll only be a while longer, and then we can save your friends and get out of here."

Edge simply nodded in understanding as he continued to stare at the barrier that barred their path. He hadn't been sure what to think of their unexpected guide before, but his gut feeling was to keep him at a healthy distance if at all possible. In fact, sheer proximity with his body somehow made him uncomfortable, as if the man gave off some sort of contagious aura that would infect him if he stayed too close. Perhaps he was simply being petty. Yet, he wasn't about to put his trust in the man until they had Asimov and Zero back safe and sound. Once that was done, then maybe they could consider the validity of everything that he had done for them thus far.

Suddenly, the brilliant streaks of energy sputtered out of existence and the path into the enemy stronghold opened up with only a few remaining wisps of smoke blocking the way. At least it was good to know that the others succeeded on their side of the mission. Perhaps Matelo had been telling them the truth all along.

"Looks like Double and Kouryuu got their job done," said the young boy, standing up and letting energy circulate through his system as he prepared himself for the coming assault. "How long do you think it will be before they get here?"

"I'm sure they'll catch up with us eventually," said the wizard as he took a step towards the freshly fuming hole. "It's only a matter of time."

Edge simply nodded as he followed the man towards the entranceway.

"It's good to know that the power source wasn't too much of a problem. I was worried since I expected it to be protected pretty heavily."

"Power source...?" said Matelo hesitantly as he stopped and rested his hand on the top of the cylindrical tunnel. "Oh yes, power source! I almost forgot that that was what I had told them in the first place! It's funny how small details can slip past you like that..."

"... what?"

"You see, there never was a power source. In fact, there was never an energy barrier either, the device that you saw before you right now was simply a mechanism of my own creation that shut down for the simple purpose of letting me know when those two morons had served their purpose. And now that all that's over with, I can get back to more important matters and out of this little façade that I've been playing."

"You... you used us?" said Edge angrily as his body tensed up and invisible waves of gravitational energy began cracking the ground beneath his feet from the intense pressure of the force he exerted. "But... why the tricks? Why go to all the trouble? Even that barrier... I couldn't touch the thing at all. Why?"

Matelo only kept his back turned on the boy as he spoke, but Edge could already feel the sinister aura flowing out from the guise that the man had pulled over their eyes for so long.

"My poor, dear boy, that's because---" and without warning, the wizard's arm shot backwards like a viper, the flesh abruptly expanding past the limits of his sleeve as the limb quickly extended outwards in a bloody mass of flesh and veins that overwhelmed Edge and smashed him against the wall before he could do a thing. Even as the mutated limb held him firmly in place against the side of the sewer tunnel, he was at a loss to find that the power that had surged at his fingertips only seconds earlier was suddenly limp and useless, slipping through his hands like water swirling down a drain. "--- I only willed it to be so," and the man slowly turned his head about to reveal bloodshot eyes and a horrible grin of razor sharp teeth. "This is, after all, the world of demons. Everything here is our playground."

And the world simply shut down before his very eyes.

...

...

...

Double carefully scraped a bit of dried blood off the wall as he lead Kouryuu down the darkened corridor of the abandoned factory. Every inch of the place appeared to hold the scars of a vicious battle with entire walls having been knocked out of their foundations, claw marks gauging through concrete and steel on all sides, and gallon upon gallon of foul smelling crimson caking every available surface. The battle seemed to have long passed though, and strangely enough there was no sign of bodies or the dead. In fact, there seemed to be nothing in the building at all despite the activity that they had witnessed from the outside, not even the remnants of broken furniture or overturned machinery left behind. It was as if the entire place had been wiped clear of any trace of residence, and while the absence of company was a thankful blessing in some ways, the lonely interior that it left behind also made them fearful of what awaited them in the shadows. The assassin stayed wary of his surroundings regardless, because there was no telling what might come after them now that their sensors were in the dark again.

He spared a short moment to glance out a nearby window as he passed by its glaring red light. The courtyard still seemed to be clear of enemies, but the opening itself did not allow for a very large field of view. Anything could still be out there, so he would have to make sure that they left before anybody found them.

Leading the rebel at a brisk pace around the next corner, he quickly checked back to his computer to see where they were positioned. The brief opening that had been given to him wasn't as much as he had hoped for, but it was still enough to record the basic schematics of the facility and pinpoint their friends' location. If everything that he had taken down was correct, then Asimov and Zero should be waiting for them three doors down. Of course, there was always the possibility that it was another trap, but they were already too deep in trouble to avoid taking risks any longer. In their current state, there were no other options left.

The empty halls finally gave way to a small row of cell doors, a small iron cage positioned at eye level the only opening on the thick slabs of dirty steel. Double quickly rechecked his information before pressing his back against the side of the third door, and as he cautiously peeked about through the small grate, his vision caught the familiar features of his companions lying on a heap in the far corner of the room. A quick nod was all it took to confirm their presence to Kouryuu, and the rebel held nothing back as she quietly wound her body up and launched a powerful front kick at the door's handle, breaking the mechanical lock in one swift motion as the assassin quickly flowed in behind the open gate with blades bristling all over his body. However, no one was waiting to attack them on the other side. No enemies. No creatures. Only the limp, battered forms of his companions, and after a second of tense observation, the assassin quickly let the sharp edges relax back into his frame as he rushed over to help them to their feet.

"Hey," he said, crouching over Asimov as the golden warrior tenderly held Zero's huddled form in his arms. "You guys okay?"

It took a second before the once Toy’s former soldier was able to open his eyes beneath the caked layers of demon blood, but when he did he managed to crack a weak smile behind all of the pain that had raped his mind only hours earlier.

"... Double..." he said wearily. "It's about damn time."

The assassin couldn't help but chuckle as his hand quickly morphed into a knife blade and severed his friend's chains from the wall. Kouryuu was already plugging wires into the back of her neck as she moved forward to transfer some of her energy reserves to the weakened warriors, but Asimov quickly waved her off, motioning to the frightened girl in his arms.

"Tend to her first. It seems that the demon sealed within did not have a good reaction upon reentry into its home dimension. Her power source has been completely drained, but otherwise she'll be fine once she starts siphoning from an outside source again."

"What about you?"

"They've cursed my body with some sort of magic, so said Zero before she passed out," said Asimov. "I don’t know how severe it is outside of severe, internal weakness, but contact with my system at this point could prove hazardous for you. Don't worry too much though. I've siphoned enough of Zero's energies over the past months to develop a small resistance to its effects. It's not a lot, but give me enough time and I should be able to recover completely."

Double nodded in understanding as he watched the rebel tend to the pigtailed girl, the latter slowly opening her eyes upon realization that help had arrived. She started to say something as the rebel began the power transfer, but instead resigned herself to the relief that her friends had come for her in the end and lay back to conserve her energy until she had fully recovered.

"You should be taking it easy too, Asimov," said the killer as he watched his companion lean weakly against the cell wall in exhaustion. "We still have a long ways to go ahead of us."

"How did you find us?" asked the golden warrior abruptly, looking up at his teammates. "I suppose it wasn't an easy task all things considered."

"We got... lucky, I suppose," said Double as he considered the events that had led to the unexpected discovery. "We were betrayed by a wizard who claimed to know your location and a way out of this place, but a small hole in his plans allowed us to pick you up on radar just before we realized that we'd been had. Edge is still with him right now, so we'll need to find him and regroup after we let you two recover. I don't plan on letting that bastard go without repaying him for his kindness, after all. It just wouldn't be hospitable."

"... a wizard...?" muttered Asimov as he thought to himself, and then without warning, he bolted to his feet in abrupt urgency, his eyes wide with alarm as he started towards the door. "A wizard?!"

"Whoa!! Slow down!" said Double, grabbing his friend's wobbling figure by the shoulders. "You're still not at full capacity. We need to let you recover before we go anywhere."

"You don't understand!" protested the golden warrior. "The situation is far more serious than you realize. We need to get Edge out of there now!"

"I'm sure Edge can handle himself," said the assassin. "After all, he's been the one to save our butts the last couple times if I remember correctly."

"Yes, but that was in the human world. Do you even know what this place is, Double? Do you realize what it means to be trapped in this realm? Zero's reaction was a direct result of her tie to the spirit within her, a backlash that came because of the demon's forced betrayal of her own kind. I'm sure you've already noticed the kind of effects that the local atmosphere has on your normal sensory system. This domain does not regulate under the same rules as the universe that we know. Here, we are at its mercy and we must play by its rules."

"Okay, but what does this have to do with the wizard?"

"Was he human?" asked Asimov.

"Yeah, but---"

"Then Edge is in trouble," cut in the golden warrior. "You said he was a wizard, right? I've studied the methodologies of demons since the clone wars, identifying their behavior and habitat for thousands of years as well as their influence in the human world. I can't say that I ever fully completed those studies, but I can tell you this much: if my calculations are correct and this place is what I think it is, humans can't use magic in this realm. The same barrier that is keeping your sensors offline also blocks the cosmic forces which are required for human beings to utilize such arts."

"Wha---? Then why...?" stuttered Double, the realization of his friend's words slowly sinking in.

"However, it only prevents humans from accomplishing as such," continued Asimov as his eyes narrowed in a fierce stare towards the outer courtyard of the factory. "The physiology of demons lets them project their aura in a different manner, allowing them continued usage of the mystic arts. Which means that the persona that you met wasn't a human at all..."

"... but rather a demon," breathed the killer, staring at the warrior in disbelief.

"Precisely. I'm sure you've already witnessed the destructive behavior of this dimension's inhabitants. Unfortunately, no matter how refined this 'wizard's' actions might have seemed, demon instinct will eventually drive him to cravings of utter destruction. This is the way that these creatures have been constructed, and there will be no exception for Edge if he gets caught in his path. I don't know what this guy's motives are, but one thing is for certain. Edge will die the second he loses his usefulness to our unknown enemy, and if we can't get him back before then, there may very well be nothing left to salvage of his body at all."

...

...

...

The young boy tried to stay awake, but the darkness swept over him like a stormy ocean, drowning him in its dark waters every time his mouth came to the surface to gasp for air. Every inch of his body burned and stank of the smell of copper and putrid innards, but neither his hands nor his feet would move, pulled out in every direction on the invisible rack upon which he lie. His eyes would not open, his vision completely inhibited, but he could feel the thousands of wires snaking into his body, from the neck, and from the sides of his gut, his armor plates pulled back to reveal the delicate innards within. At that moment, Edge knew hopelessness, and he wanted to scream in defiance at his inability to help himself.

'Why?!' his mind shouted throughout the darkness, his mouth unable to voice the words that blurted out the rest of the world. 'Why me? Why can't I do anything?'

And though he did not expect anybody to hear him, a voice came anyways, a smooth, slick oil that he recognized as the devil who had brought him down.

'I must admit, your friends did a perfectly good job in their unwitting task, but you were always the real prize. You see, there was one thing in particular that I never lied about, and that was knowing how to get out of this horrible place. Unfortunately, that also happens to be something that I cannot accomplish by myself due to certain circumstances. This is where you come into my plan, for the power that I require to break free of this dimension is something that I was lucky enough to find contained inside your shell, a power that normally cannot be obtained in this forsaken valley of sinners...'

'... Adam..." said Edge slowly. "You mean... the angel...?'

'Yes, exactly. And now that I have you, I can walk upon the human world once more, just like I did all those thousands of years ago during the age of the Legendary Hero, Kai..."

...

...

...

The small party quickly evacuated the factory and made their way back to the sewer entrance that they had come out of earlier. While they had lost the signal orb that had led them to their lost companions in the first place, it had been easy enough to trace back their trail to the crossroads where they had originally parted ways simply by examining the path that they had recorded on their extensive journey of the sewers thus far. Double had been slightly hesitant to risk entering the tunnels again after their brief encounter with the enormous behemoth that prowled the area earlier, but in the end they all decided that it was probably the only way to retrace their steps since the maps that the computers had recorded accounted for the underworld, but not the overworld. Tracking Edge from that point on was a much longer process, as none of them had any knowledge of the trail on which Matelo had taken their friend. However, there was only a finite number of tunnels that led in the direction of the mercury bit that Double had attached to the young boy, and it wasn't long before they came out of the muck and into a small, rounded chamber with a single exit at its far end, a large portion of the closest wall smashed to rubble by what appeared to have been a vicious struggle.

"How are we doing?" asked Kouryuu as she cautiously peered about the empty room.

"Seems like Edge is straight ahead if the signal is correct, definitely within a two hundred meter range," said the assassin as he did the same. "It looks like we're too late to warn him about the obvious though, if this is the result of Matelo's treason."

"Surely, we're too late to warn Edge of the trap that's been laid," said Asimov, moving forward to examine the machines that were attached to the top and bottom of the exit into the chambers beyond. "However, it doesn't appear that they've been anticipating us to come this far either. If they did, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't post any defense at such a strategic choke point." Cautiously, he moved into the mouth of the tunnel and peered into the darkness beyond, looking for any signs of activity. "This one looks like it goes on for at least another hundred meters, but I can't tell much beyond that. It looks like it’s a one way road too, so there's a strong possibility that they're simply waiting until we enter this hole so that they can wedge us in on both sides. What do you think?"

"I don't think we have much of a choice," said Double grimly. "You said that they'd kill him the second they get what they want, right? If this is the only way in- and it must be, considering all the other tunnels that we've checked- then we're just wasting our time plotting out here. Either they're waiting for us or they aren't, but there's only one entrance into the core of this thing, and I don't see any other way around that."

The golden warrior nodded solemnly as glanced back into the darkness and let his energy aura flare.

"Then let's go in full tilt," he said. "We might as well break through with everything we got if they're planning to trap us. At least then there's still the slight possibility that the method of our assault can catch them off guard if they're careless."

He stopped briefly as a small hand grabbed him by the forearm, and when he looked down, he was surprised to see Zero's large eyes looking up into his with a strong determination embedded in her gaze.

"Let me lead," she said in her firmest voice possible. "You're still not fully recovered from their curse yet."

"Zero," whispered Asimov softly, and before he could say another word, Kouryuu slowly came up from behind.

"Are you sure?" asked the rebel. "You've been through a lot lately. We don't want to push you too hard if you still need some rest."

The pigtailed girl seemed to hesitate for a slight second, caught deep in thought of the various trials which she had faced earlier. Yet, it was only for a second, and without any further doubt she turned about with a smile of confidence and flair, ready to face any challenge that might fly out to oppose her.

"Don't worry about me," she said brightly. "Even though the power that I have in me is from one of their own, I can still use their powers against them. It’ll be helpful in tracking the enemy before they realize what we’re doing. This is simply the way things are, for demons have only been fated to sin against themselves for all eternity."

"... you don't have to do this," said Asimov gently. "I sealed that spirit within you so that you would never have to feel the harm it brought to others again. I didn't want you to have to accept its mantra. I never meant for you to have to live your life in harmony with its existence..."

And the girl just smiled.

"It's not your fault, Asi-chan. It's nobody's fault. I just have to accept who I am, ne? Denying it won't make it go away, and it will only delay the inevitable confrontation that I need to make to move on anyways. Besides, if I can use it to protect you, then there's nothing wrong with that, right? If I can use it for the future, then there's no harm in that."

Double simply sighed and looked over to the entrance into the enemy's lair.

"You've grown," he said with an approving nod. And without another word, he turned to face the gaping maw that would lead them into the heart of the tainted earth. "We'll go in at full speed with Zero at the lead. Everybody keep a good eye out. There's no telling what we'll find in there."

"ROGER!!!" said Zero cheerfully as she bounced over towards the front as though she had never touched the diseased soil of the world, as if she had never lost the gentle innocence that she had woken up upon Akuji with. And even as the brutal spikes began to grow out of her shoulderpads and the bloodthirsty claws reached out from her fingers, she still smiled that gentle smile when Asimov called out her name, confident that she could lead them all the way to the end.

"... fight on, young girl," he said, letting his body become bathed in golden energy as he prepared to follow her into the abyss.

"Ah," she replied in agreement, the deeper, crueler voice of the Demoness never losing the young girl's kindness as her hands became enveloped in burning hellfire and her body exploded forward down the sewer tunnel with her friends following close behind.

...

Ten meters passed in a second as the quartet of warriors rocketed down the narrow passageway, keeping their eyes peeled for any small openings in which their grotesque enemies might be hiding. Taking up the rear, Double took the time to spare a glance behind them every once in a while to see if their adversaries might be planning to trap the group from both sides as Asimov had proposed, but nothing ever came. No beasts. No demons. No colossal sewer monsters. Nothing. Fifty meters passed. Seventy. Eighty. And still the crimson flames remained in Zero's palms, none of their blades ever needing to spill the blood of an unfortunate interloper. This was certainly not what the assassin had expected. This man who had betrayed them was smart enough to encounter their expedition squad within an hour of their passing into the dimension and wrap them into his scheme. He had been smart enough to divide their numbers in half and use them all without ever having to say more than a few words to play off of their doubts. He had been smart enough to know their limits and account for their predicted actions in his plan. So why didn't he see the obvious possibility that they might survive to make a return assault against his betrayal? Why didn't he guard the only entrance into the underground headquarters where he had to know they would return to rescue their companion?

Two hundred meters.

Suddenly, Zero's flying body ground to a halt in midair as she stared blankly ahead and let the pyres in her hand wink out in silence. Asimov and Kouryuu barely had time to stop their own body momentum from overrunning the Demoness and quickly whirled about towards the three-way crossroad just ahead with their weapons bared. However, nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be standing in their way, and after a couple seconds of silence, Double began to wonder what exactly had made the girl stop without warning.

"Is something wrong?" asked Asimov, keeping his energy field fully powered despite the fact that Zero had let hers die down. "Is it something that we can't see?"

The pigtailed girl stayed silent for another long moment as she floated back down to the ground and quietly walked the last couple meters to the tunnel junction. She held her clawed hand out to the side, signaling them to stay behind her as she turned right down a curved, sloping path, a few scattered rays of light glimmering somewhere up ahead.

"There's so many of them," she said softly, continuing to lead them onward without a single glance back. "So many... it's obvious why they didn't even bother to set up a defensive barricade now. They never really needed to in the first place."

Double quickly slid ahead of the Demoness and peered into the blinding source of the light, wondering what exactly she had meant by those words. However, the sight before his eyes left him completely speechless in forced agreement with the things that she had just said.

Before him lay a valley of massive proportion that must have stretched out for at least a mile in every direction, all dropping low to a small, flat area at the very bottom like some sort of enormous stadium carved from the underground rock. The sides of the canyon gradually slanted downwards towards the flat space in the center like thousands upon thousands of steps while the ceiling rose above everything like a gigantic, stalactite filled sky of earth, the sheer size of the auditorium alone daunting in its proportions. However, it was not the chamber itself that had shocked the girl, but rather the inhabitants that filled it up. Even with the enormous size of the mysterious chamber, there was not an empty inch upon its floor, for hundreds of thousands of demon creatures lined every row with their enormous girth, chanting and screeching in a cacophony of noise that had somehow been blocked from their ears only moments before. Beasts of every size and shape stamped their feet and opened their disfigured maws to scream at the ceremony proceeding below, some of them shaking the entire chamber with girths that must have dwarfed small buildings. Bloated, stinking mounds of flesh fell over one another in a strangely organized chaos as the creatures lifted their various limbs in worship of their leader, and far down below in the center of the valley stood Matelo himself, waving his arms wide to the open crowd while Edge lay helpless behind him on the platform of a mysterious machine. The young boy was elevated high into the air by the contraption, strapped to a thick, steel plate nearly twice his size, but beneath the metallic bed and manacles lie a mess of wires that wound down to several enormous cylindrical engines, the moan of exhaustion that excreted from their gears creating a dissonance equal to that of the bizarre followers within the room. Huge, steel machines wound out and up a flat ramp to the far side of the valley where yet another set of engines lay, suspending several shining rings of an unusual alloy in midair that slowly spun in opposite directions from one another, the man-sized space within their circumference gently distorting every once in a while with a familiar sparkle of blue energy. And even as the assassin watched, their companion's body periodically lit up with the same familiar sparkle, its brilliance trailing along the cylinders upon the ground and feeding into the rings’ engines in slow pulses that brought a little more strength to the ripples each time.

"They're draining his energy," whispered Double above the din. "He's going to die if we don't do something soon!"

"Hold on a minute," Asimov with a steady hand, walking up just behind the killer and gazing at the ceremony down below. "It's certain that they'll try to kill Edge eventually, but right now it looks like they have some other goal in mind. Do you have any idea what they're trying to do to him right now?"

"I can sense the energies in those rings," said Zero, and Double suddenly remembered that her demonic half must still be allowing her sensors to run at full capacity. "They're trying to fold a portal into the human world to escape this place. It seems like that machine is being powered by some of Edge's energies, but..."

Double's brow creased in confusion at her hesitation, waiting for her to finish the sentence.

"But... what?"

However, the Demoness' eyes were no longer on the spinning metal loops, but rather on the young boy in the center of it all, held down helplessly by the horrible monster in human guise.

"... there's something strange... I can't quite tell what those energies are because they're being synthesized to match this realm's dimensional matrix, but it feels very familiar, and very... dirty, to me." Her body unconsciously shivered in a brief moment of fear, but the assassin simply patted her on the arm while keeping his eyes on the scene below, silently congratulating his comrade for her efforts.

"You did a good job, but let's not worry about that right now. The main points are that not only have we found our friend, but we may now have a way to get out of here as well if we can play our cards right. The only problem is figuring out when and how to strike. If we're going to take advantage of this chance, we can't be too early or else the portal will never form in time and we'll be trapped here forever. If we're too late, we risk the chance of losing Edge. And this is all besides the fact that there are about a million THINGS out there that wouldn't hesitate to turn us into scrap, and that’s not even counting our friend, Matelo."

"I hate to say it, but I don't think Double or I will be of particular use out there this time," said Kouryuu regretfully. "Neither of us were made for mass combat situations, especially against opponents of this caliber."

"Then we'll just need to work around that," said Asimov as he eyed the situation carefully. "There's no possible way that we can take this many opponents on at one time, so we can't go in by force. However, demons do have certain weaknesses that we can exploit, especially their overzealous, violent tendencies. Couple that with Zero's inherent magic abilities and my absorption aura, and the two of us may be able to create enough of a ruckus within their own ranks for you two to slip ahead relatively unnoticed while we keep the crowd occupied. Matelo should be your only opponent then, and hopefully he shouldn't be too much of a problem so that you can get in there rescue Edge. If we time this correctly, we can approximate the exact moment at which the portal back to our world will open as well as the amount of extra energy that must be siphoned off of our friend in order to sustain the gate long enough for us to get through it without letting any of these guys out."

"Risky, but we don't really have any other choice, do we?" said Double regrettably, looking over the cheering masses in disdain. "Zero, can you estimate how long it will be before that portal opens?"

"The portal should reach its tuning apex in about two minutes, but it would be best for us to move thirty seconds prior to ensure the optimal time in which we can plot our escape, as well as rescue Edge before he is burnt out due to energy loss."

"Thirty seconds," breathed the assassin, staring towards Edge's unconscious figure. There was no time left. If they didn't do something soon, the way to the human world would open and a sea of monsters that Akuji had not seen for eons would flood out upon the land in a deluge of violent hunger and rage. There was no telling if anything would be left to go back to if they failed now. And they only had sixty seven seconds to go if they wanted to move out with the theoretically best schedule possible. "How are you feeling, Asimov?"

"Just fine," answered the golden warrior with a tight grin. Surely, some of the curse still had linger, but he shrugged it off regardless. There was no time left to feel down. No time left to think. And Double nodded in reply.

"All right then," said the killer. "Let's do this."

...

Gobs of angelic energy sucked away from Edge's motionless shell pumped faster and faster into the gateway machine that would lead Matelo and his legions into the lush world of man once again. Cheers filled the sacred hall with uproarious laughter and elation, and the wizard could not help but be overcome by the frightful merriment himself. It had been far too long since he had stepped out outside of his own home, and he sincerely missed the simple pleasures that the human world had to offer. Soon, he would be free of his shackles, and soon he would never have to worry about being held back ever again.

His ears abruptly pricked up in alarm as maws screeching in blind rage suddenly overcame the more prevalent roar of victory. Glancing about towards his rear, he caught the last flickers of a rising plume of flame between a twin-headed goat beast and a twenty foot tall troll, the latter of which had apparently been singed by a blast of fire from the former. The troll in all its massive folds of greasy fat took no time in hesitating to bring its meaty fists down on one of its antagonist's heads, and in response the remaining goat head angrily reached up towards the monster's face and wrapped its powerful jaws about its adversary's bulbous nose. A vicious scuffle broke out as the two swung their limbs about wildly in a bloody fistfight that did not discriminate against nearby unfortunates, and soon the relatively small battle became an all out brawl throughout the entire section of the underground auditorium. Matelo firmly tried to suppress his anger at the ill manners of his followers as he lifted his palm in their direction and let loose with an titanic wall of force that flattened their thousands of bodies across the rigid slope of the valley in an enormous stain of blood and steaming innards, but when he looked about, it was already too late to put a stop to the pandemonium that had somehow blossomed throughout his peons' ranks. The same thing had happened throughout the entire stadium, small infractions quickly erupting into entire wars between the many varied disfigurations throughout the hall, the small flat platform upon which he stood quickly becoming an island amidst a lake of acidic blood that burned all about him. Luckily, the machinery for the portal was constructed to withstand such nonsensical adversities, but how could his forces have been thrown into chaos without him even noticing? Why hadn't he foreseen these consequences beforehand?

And almost as if to answer his calls, two small humanoid figures leapt up and out of the sea of violently twisting bodies, both of their blades soaked in the blood of their enemies. Neither face was a stranger, the man and woman mecha stalking him warily above the ocean of gore in the room of chaos, and though he hadn't exactly accounted for their sudden appearance in his plans, the reunion spread his lips apart in a wicked grin nonetheless.

"Welcome, both of you," he said cruelly. "I didn't actually think that---"

His words abruptly stopped when neither of them even bothered trying to listen to what he had to say. Blue strings of light whipped out from between the rebel's fingertips and wrapped their nooses tightly about his wrists and neck, and before he even had the chance to break free of his temporary bonds the assassin cut through the air like a bullet and cleanly lopped his head off his shoulders, the wizard's skull bouncing once upon the jagged ground before rolling to a halt near the end of the island. The killer simply pushed the remaining body to the side as Kouryuu quickly turned about to the contraption to free their companion, her plasma infused blade flashing cleanly through the air as she cut free the shackles that held him down on the cold metal platform. Double was about to join her when he caught an unexpected movement out of the corner of his eye, and that was when he suddenly realized that Matelo's head was still quite animated despite its detached situation.

"... that wasn't very nice," grumbled the wizard crossly, the smile having completely disappeared from his smudged face as his headless body suddenly got up to its feet and calmly walked over to palm its sensory center by the top of the skull. Using both hands to steady it on top of his bloody stump of a neck, crimson strands of flesh quickly threaded upwards between the gap and sewed the severed cranium back upon the main body as the man silently rolled his eyes about in disturbing fashion towards the intruders. "I even had the decency to leave you as prey for my followers instead of killing you myself. I thought that you'd at least be a little thankful for my hospitality."

"You bastard," said Double as his arms lengthened out into fearsome blades. "You used us from the very beginning."

"Of course I did, you idiot!" laughed Matelo maliciously. "What else do you think I would do? You mistakenly believe that there's a place for the weak in this world, but that is not the case. Here, only the strong, the smart, and the cunning survive. Everything else is simply prey. This is the basis of all life in existence, is it not? Human beings delude themselves with visions of a perfect utopia and grandeur, with worlds of balanced civilization and coexistence. But was that ever achieved in their lengthy, tragic history? Have you- creations from the human universe- seen this idealistic nonsense that they've been spouting out for millions upon millions of years? What gives you or any human the right to even think otherwise? What gives you the right to believe that you are special and beyond the very forces that bind reality together?"

"You're nuts," muttered Kouryuu as she slung Edge's free but unconscious form over her shoulder, slowly stepping up behind the assassin as howls of madness continued to fill the chamber.

"You can call me whatever you want, but I've already taken what I need from your friend." The wizard turned towards the swirling metal rings as they spun faster and faster about the distorted void in their center, and even as he looked on, he could see a small pinpoint of scintillating brilliance emerge from the center of the unstable air, slowly growing larger with each passing second until it was about the size of an apple. "The portal will open to the human world, and no matter how short it may last, it will definitely be long enough for me to escape this wretched hellhole. However, there's still more than enough time to ensure that you will no longer pose a problem to the last stage of my grand design, and since none of you are necessary for my scheme any longer, I see no further reason to let you live."

The man silently raised his hand into the air to a stunning silence that abruptly gripped the ringing chamber. It took Double and Kouryuu a second to realize that the small war that their friends had incited had suddenly come to an unexpected halt, and when they whirled about in place to stare at the millions of creatures who were still left within the gigantic auditorium, they were shocked to see that each and every one listened and obeyed the small wizard's wordless order down below, some of them standing at full attention despite gushing wounds and missing limbs, the small swish of the river of blood swirling about the island nearby audible over the stunning stillness that gripped the entire room. Not a movement was made. Not a breath was taken. And when the pair turned back to their wicked host, Matelo only grinned in confidence and victory, knowing full well that he was in total control.

"Asimov---!" started Double, whirling back towards the endless rows in search of their companions, and when he finally spotted them standing amongst the mesmerized forest of creatures looking just as confused as they did, he realized in despair as to how much they stood out amongst the ranks of the enemy, their blood-soaked armor doing little to hide their angular, metal bodies amongst the crowd of organic beasts.

"Yes, you've all caused me a fair bit of trouble, haven't you?" said Matelo grimly, finally bringing his hand back down to his side once again. "Kill them all."

The man's voice had not been particularly loud, but suddenly every devil in the room was drawn into a depraved feeding frenzy as they all turned towards the android intruders with their eyes full of unbridled fury. It was if they had just been permission to destroy the outside meddlers once and for all, and even as Double looked on in despair at the sea of monsters that slowly cascaded down on all sides towards the three of them in the middle, he knew not how they could break free this time around. He simply didn't know what to do.

A streak of red and gold suddenly swooped down from above as Asimov drove the massive body of a mutated horse creature into the machine that had held their friend only seconds earlier, the latter shrieking in pain as several sharp shards of metal pieced straight through its fleshy body. Zero came down right at his side and ripped her claws through the waves of attacking creatures in a storm of blood. Geysers of crimson fluid flew through the air as they joined their friends in the bottom of the valley, but it seemed like a futile action amongst the flowing sea of monsters that came crashing down upon them like a rising tide.

"He must be a greater demon!" shouted the golden warrior above the din, narrowly escaping a pounce from a nearby creature before jamming his spiked elbow through its skull. "There's no other explanation for how he could be able to exert control on so many others at once!"

"That's nice to know, but it's not going to help us too much unless we figure out how to get these things off our back!" said Double in response as he eyed a dozen approaching attackers.

The Demoness said nothing as she abruptly slid in between the two factions, spreading her arms wide as traces of hellfire began to spawn at her fingertips. A blinding red light burst forth from her vision as she faced the oncoming hordes motionlessly, watching silently as they bore teeth and nails to rip her to pieces. The assassin suddenly grew painfully aware of how close they were to tearing his comrade apart and forced his feet forward even as he knew that there was no way that he could protect her from them all. However, seconds before she was sure to have been ripped to pieces, the front lines suddenly whirled about in exact unison and fell upon their associates, the hideous screams of the abominations splitting each other apart echoing throughout the room as chunky entrails filled the air in scattered pieces.

"Mmmm," hummed Matelo in amusement, staring at the Demoness as he scratched his chin. "It seems that I've underestimated you in particular."

"Zero---?!" exclaimed Double in surprise, watching as his companion strained to keep her arms spread wide against the wall of turncoats that she had enthralled before her. His attention was temporarily distracted by an enormous boom that rang out on the far side of the room, and when he looked back to the where the spinning rings lie his eyes widened to find that the once shimmering air had exploded into a full fledged gateway of swirling blue clouds and light, the remnants of Edge's innate energies finally having taken concrete form.

"Now's our chance!" shouted Asimov above the bedlam, cutting down a ferocious behemoth that had strayed from the pack and turned about to cut Zero down. Without even waiting for the gutted creature to hit the ground, he quickly grabbed the pigtailed girl's stiff frame about the waist and started running towards the far side of the auditorium where their path to freedom lie. "Zero's keeping them distracted, let's make a break for it while we can!"

"And do you think I'll let you go that easily?" said Matelo in a voice that was suddenly chilling in its bloodlust. His eyes followed the golden warrior as he streaked past him towards the portal, and with a cruel snicker the wizard lifted his hands up to smite his enemies down before they got a chance to reach their destination. However, without warning, his entire upper torso toppled over to the ground like a brick, legs unable to hold his body up as his face smashed into the jagged rocks with a blow that dislocated his jaw and crushed the left side of his skull. The man growled in anger as he quickly braced his hands against the ground to pull himself up again, but it was to no avail, the force holding his crushed shell to the earth being far too strong for even his massive strength to pull back up. But how was that possible? What could any of them possibly do to render him this helpless?

His gaze darted up to the remaining three androids as they streaked past him in the chaos-torn room, and out of his last remaining eye, he found the answer to his problem. The green-haired boy was still slung over the rebel's shoulder, limp and useless, his body bereft of the energy that Matelo had sucked forth to create the doorway to the human world. And yet, somehow the android managed to be awake, holding out a hand of flickering gravitational energy that held the wizard fast to the ground while they made their escape. How was it even possible that the boy was conscious? How could he be defeated so easily by such a worthless little creature?!

The bellow that the wizard let forth as he ripped himself from the earth's pull dwarfed the world as he twisted his bleeding face free from the ground and whirled about towards the fleeing quintet with murder in his eyes. The golden warrior and the Clone War relic still remained near the entrance, the latter continuing to drive enough of his armies into madness so that their combined ranks were unable to organize a proper method of extermination. However, with every passing second that the remaining three ran towards their salvation, he could already feel the gate becoming weaker, and Matelo simply watched in despair as the body of the one called Asimov lit up in glorious blues as he slowly sucked away the portal's energy.

"GGGRRRRAAAHHHH~!!!" roared the wizard, the ground exploding beneath his feet as he leapt forward and rocketed towards the intruders. "How dare you interfere with my plans! How dare you even try to defy my rightful reign over all that lives!!!"

His hands glowed dark with black fire, his entire body growing hot as he fell down upon his prey in rage. His slender frame howled through the air like a fiery comet and his fury completely overflowed from his thin shell as he fell towards Asimov and Zero's helpless figures with intentions of annihilation filling every inch of his immortal flesh. And yet, he never quite reached his target, for seconds before he was about to rip their brittle shells asunder, the rebel Kouryuu had drawn her sword from her back and leapt between them with a look of pure determination filling her simple, mortal eyes. His arms suddenly stuck to his sides by an inexplicable force of energy as Edge limply leaned against the assassin with an outstretched hand in his direction. But this time, he could not break free, his powerful fire suddenly beginning to die out as if purified by the very flames from Uriel's sword. Could this young boy have already mastered the angel's power within his body? Was there more to this small group of warriors than he had thought there was?

And suddenly it was with great shock that Kouryuu drove her sharp katana through the middle of his chest, stabbing knives of pain racking his body for the first time in millions of years.

"Y... you little---!!!" he sputtered through forced gasps as a trickle of blood ran down the side of his mouth. This could not be happening. This should not be happening. "W... why...?!"

The rebel seemed just as confused as he did, her widened eyes showing open surprise that her futile assault had even done any damage at all. Yet, it was only fleeting, for in the next second her gaze turned back to that of a hardened warrior who knew exactly what she had to do in order for her to save her friends. And she would let nothing get in her way.

"I don't know why," she said coolly. "But right now, I really don't care either."

The sickening sound of flesh pulling itself apart filled the air as she turned the cutting edge of her sword upwards and rammed her fist against the underside of her blade. The resulting slash was absolutely devastating, and Matelo could literally say nothing as the cool steel ripped up through the middle of his face and tore his tongue in half before exiting out of the top of his skull with a sickening pop, the glowing edge drenched in black ooze as the rebel quickly fell backwards to the rest of her friends. The broken wizard only stumbled about blindly as half of his upper torso lamely bent over to the side, his separated eye watching in vain as Double carried the green-haired boy through the shining portal and out into the world beyond. The rebel simply shook the dark blood from her blade with a single swipe outwards and quickly followed behind her companions. Soon only the golden warrior and the Demoness were left behind, both of them stepping backwards towards the way home even as Matelo vainly reached out to them with the one hand that still seemed to be connected to his failing nervous system.

"You can't do this to me..." he managed to spit out, lurching forward a few steps before his body toppled over to the ground from the misappropriation of weight balance in his newly rendered wounds. And then louder. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!!!"

But he was helpless now, lost and alone amongst an ocean of insane followers, powerless to do anything but watch as Asimov slowly backed away towards the closing gate with Zero close by.

"I know not who you are or who you were before you came here," he said. "I know not the sins you did in the past and I know not your character nor your soul. However, I do know one thing, and that is that I won't let you or your kind take us ever again. And if I ever see you in the future, I'll make sure to finish the job that Kouryuu didn't."

The two disappeared through the cloudy light even as the brilliance began to fade away into thin air once again, and Matelo could barely contain himself as he desperately leapt to his feet and limped towards the fading glory in a pitiful trail of blood and spilling intestines along the ground. He reached out with a crimson hand towards the dying luster, knowing that another chance may not come for thousands of years once the last of the angel's energy residue faded away from his world, his hell. And even as his own untamed scream became lost in the heavy throngs of war around him, the power to crush entire worlds welled up within his fragile body and exploded behind in his wake as he flung himself towards his dying salvation, not caring anymore as his legs burned up in the fiery holocaust that fanned out and consumed everything it touched, propelling him to his distant fate, graceful fingers reaching out to grasp the closing gate to heaven that threatened to exit his world forever.

...

...

...

...

...

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me."

--- Psalm 23, The Holy Bible

...

...

...

...

...

Asimov lie sprawled out on the face of the wastelands beneath the starry night sky, his eyes slowly tracing shapes through the vast ocean above as he connected the sparkling dots like endless points in some sort of elaborate cosmic puzzle. His body quietly hummed above the sand and dirt as he peacefully conserved what little energy he had left, but Zero still seemed to be quite okay as she snuggled close to his side despite the enormous strain that she had taken to hold back Matelo's hordes. At first, he had tried to tell her to rest and save her strength, but eventually he just gave up on the concept entirely. It was simply part of her nature to be energetic. To deny that would be to deny that the very sky above their heads was blue.

How long had they lie like this now, after they had been dropped off in such crude fashion upon the surface of Akuji? Twenty minutes? An hour? No, that didn't really matter at the moment. All that mattered was that they were there, they were together, and they were home.

"I miss stargazing," said the pigtailed girl as she looked up at the heavens with the golden warrior. "Why don't we do this more often?"

"I'm sure we'll have more time to do it in the future when things quiet down a bit," said Asimov with a small laugh. "I'm sure that a day will come when... when we can try to live out our lives like everybody else."

The young girl simply nodded absently as she looked up into space, raising her hand up to the stars as if she planned to grasp them between her fingertips.

"Is it possible for us, robots designed for war, to live like everybody else? Is there a place in this world for us at all?"

"Of course there is," said Asimov, and smiled, reaching out to the stars with her. Yes, they were home. That was all that mattered.

"There always has been. Sometimes, we just forget that it's there..."

...

...

...

"I can't believe that we actually made it back alive."

"I'll second that notion," said Kouryuu as she lay out in the open deserts looking up at the night sky above. The journey back into Akuji had been just as rough as it had been leaving it, and seconds after they had all leapt through the burning portal to the other side, they all woke up miles outside of the Kei-Shu town that they had been in before without any trace left of the gate that had brought them across time and space in the first place. The sun had long since set over the horizon by that time, and now they simply lie out to rest while they waited for Terpfen to trace their signal down and pick them up.

"Are you okay, Edge? It looked like that machine took a lot out of you. I was surprised that you were even able to wake up after all you've been through."

"I'll be okay," said the young boy, opting to sit up as he rested his forearms across his knees and stared off into the distance. "Don't worry about me too much. That machine didn't take as much out of me as it might have seemed."

"Ironically, if Matelo had never taken you hostage, we'd never have been able to get back in the first place," snickered the assassin, putting his arms behind his head as he looked up at the stars. "But it still bothers me as to why it was you in particular that he needed in order to plan his escape out of that world. Do you have any idea why that was?"

Edge said nothing for a second as his eyes glazed over across the desert, his fingers gently wrapping a little tighter about his knees as his mind shifted towards the image of the six-winged seraph in the back of his mind. He had already tried to deny Adam's existence once. He had already tried to run away from the lies that the angel had been feeding him before his very eyes. But if everything that Matelo had told him was true, maybe he couldn't run away after all. Maybe the angel was still inside him, hiding, watching. Waiting for the right moment to pop out again. Who knew how far he would go to set him down some path that he did not want to encounter? Who knew what that creature inside him would do next time, especially now that Edge had tried to deny his very being?

He was afraid, afraid for himself as well as for his friends.

He did not want to become the victim of fate.

He did not want to die a death that was not his own to decide.

Perhaps that was what he feared the most...

"... I don't know," answered the young boy bluntly, continuing to stare off into the endless beyond. What could he do to stop the tumbling within his head? What could he do to escape a past that wasn't even his own...?

Perhaps the better question was to ask if he could do anything at all? Maybe he was already walking down the path of destiny, facing a preordained future that awaited him in distance, something indiscriminate to success, to failure, and to dreams...

"I don't know."

...

...

...

Hours had passed since anybody had touched the cold wasteland surface, a freezing wind gently licking the loose sand on top as the light of the moons high above bore down upon the empty plains. Edge and the others had long since moved on with their companions, the lights of the Kei-Shu town in the distance growing dim as even the strongest of night owls put out their lamps to sleep. However, a single creature still stirred in the middle of the endless wilderness as the shadows began to gather upon the ground in a solid lump of black darkness, its hardened patience having finally paid off as it slowly rose up from the earth in a concentrated gob of nothingness to take form once again. Slowly, from the dusk color was spawned, the clump stretching out taller and taller as a pair of arms and legs began to extend from what was once only a distorted torso. Clothes began to define themselves on the man, a long, majestic cape flowing out behind his back along with the tattered traveler's clothing over his well-shaped body. And finally the long spikes of green hair emerged from his head, slightly covering Matelo's ugly facial scar as he rose up into the night air and stretched out his weary joints in relaxation.

"Free," he said to nobody in particular as an honest smile spread out across his face. "Oh, free at last." It had been so long since he had tasted the fresh air of the human world. He was almost afraid that all of his efforts would be in vain after the unexpected incident caused by the ones who ended up being both his savors as well as his bain, but everything turned out to work just fine. His plans had gone quite well at first, the rebel and killer having been tricked easily enough into destroying the dimensional barrier that had been erected by angels ages ago to ensure his inability to escape. Neither he nor his fellow demons could touch the monument without being torn apart by its holy energies, but to a being of neither Heaven nor Hell, that "energy source" was little more than a piece of glass waiting to be shattered. The conclusion to his plot certainly had not been played out as he had expected, but he had still managed to reach a favorable outcome in the end. Surely, the armies to which he had promised glory could not be happy about being left behind to wallow in their own filth, but that was simply too bad for them. Beside, what defiance could they offer against somebody like himself, especially now? Only a fool would dare to defy him at his full power, and that was exactly what he planned to achieve as soon as he saw the chance that he was looking for.

Still, the enigmatic androids bore more than a couple mysteries amongst their numbers. The demon girl was of little interest. He was well aware of the Clone Wars that had claimed and imprisoned so many of his fellow brethren. The assassin also meant little to him in the long run. He had no use for an outdated piece of trash like that. However, to find one of Toy's own servants- one who had been around back before his own imprisonment- that was a rare treat indeed. But why would Asimov be traveling with such a ragtag band of nobodies? Had he turned against his own master? No, that seemed impossible even for him. Only a fool would dare trifle with the will of a creature like Toy, even if the god had been weakened since his days of glory before the new Sacred Goddess had taken up the responsibility bequeathed upon Her by Her predecessor. Luckily, Asimov had not recognized him either, so at least that was to his advantage. He would have to investigate the situation later on. Perhaps there was something in that relationship that he may be able to exploit for his own purposes.

The green-haired android also bore familiar interest if only because he bore the energies of the angel, something completely unexpected, but delightfully welcome. Without those energies, he would have never been able to break the final seal that had kept him locked away in that realm to rot for eternity, but why would that power be held by such weak fledging such as that boy? He knew not what the Sacred Goddess was planning, he himself having been imprisoned before DaiMaouBaan had been presumably wiped from the face of the earth, but perhaps even in the dying world that he had come out upon, the Goddess still left traces of her holy influence lying in the most unexpected of creatures. Again, it was something that he would have to investigate in the near future. The boy could become a formidable nuisance if he did not keep his eye on him.

However, the one who worried him the most was the rebel girl. On the surface, she seemed just as useless as her shape-shifting companion, but somehow her simple blade had run through his soul like butter, cutting down into his very essence until he had wanted to scream out loud from the pain that racked his being. How was that possible? Only a few creatures had been able to cause him such agony, one of them being the Legendary Hero, Kai, another being his own long-deceased son, Yuutsu. But this time it should not have happened. For him to be harmed by a robot, a simple toy of mankind, was beyond even his ability to comprehend. For him to have been inflicted pain upon by a lifeless chunk of metal... to be touched by man's soiled hands would be a lesser offense.

"... vengeance can come later," he muttered to himself instead, suddenly aware of how eagerly the earth beneath him had begun to rumble in response to his anger, and he lifted his hand into the air to quench the corrupted flames that were about to birth about his feet. He had barely made his entrance into the human world and right now there were more important issues to attend to, the first thing being to cast away the useless disguise that he had hid himself in for so long.

Beneath the light of the three moons, his body suddenly fell apart and stretched itself out once more, the wizard's façade falling away as he finally allowed himself to reveal his true form to reality once again. His basic shell still resembled that of a human figure even as his upper garments fell away, but soon the color of his skin sprouted into shades of putrid green and black, pulsing veins stretching out of his taunt epidermis even as hardened muscles ripped through all but the baggy pants on his legs and the boots on his feet. Wicked claws several feet in length stretched out of each finger as his left arm suddenly dropped down to the ground in a suddenly grown spurt that brought its length to over twice of his own height. About his shoulders and chest sprouted crystalline balls that glowed of magical brilliance and cast their own eerie light upon the ground below, and from these budded a multitude of new arms, skinny and sickly looking in their stunted growth, but whose strength was more than enough to bend steel within their small, sharp claws. One of these arms sprouted out of his left thigh as well as one of the crystal structures took form on his leg in a bizarre mutation, and as he slowly lifted both of his main limbs high into the air, his eyes began to burn with a powerful light whose invisible force could not be explained in human words. Slowly, his long locks of hair straightened towards the cursed heavens along with the inhumanly long ears that had began to grow out of the side of his head. And with his horrible facial scars no longer hidden from view, the Demon God finally allowed himself a well-earned sigh of relief, his long journey of patience and perseverance finally complete.

"Yes, vengeance must come later," said Valkair to himself, flexing the fingers of his horribly deformed left hand, each sharpened digit as long as a man's arm. That arm yearned for the bauble that he treasured the most, the thing that held the key to his true, invincible power. That treasure, Valkair's Orb, was the last thing that he needed to make his life complete. But he did not need to rush things yet. No. After all, he had waited millions of years just to seize the chance to escape from hell. He could spare the humans a little while longer in order to reclaim the very thing that would allow him to take the world for himself.

Yes, a little longer...

Just a little while longer...

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End "Demon Blood"